


Friendly Fire

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Ready For The Siege [16]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Black Spectre, F/F, F/M, Memory Alteration, Multi, Red Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-10 10:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3286526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The Red Room has returned.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Set Up

Slipping out of Japan had been far easier than Natasha had expected. After a few days in Australia to recuperate, the trio landed in Seattle. Agents of Black Spectre were on the Red Room target list. This organization brainwashed any number of kidnapped women, stole currency plates and wanted to bring down the United States government and destabilize the world to let chaos reign. Their agents were all female and wore all black and black gas masks.

"I don't like the sound of this," James intoned, looking over the data that Natasha and Yelena had hacked out of Hydra and AIM databases. It was much more complete a file on Black Spectre agents and intentions than the composite file that SHIELD had. Natasha looked over all the data they had, committing the important parts to memory.

"They brainwash women," Natasha said flatly, still looking at the file. "Looks like drugs, sounds and triggers in various combinations, depending on the willpower of the victim they abduct. They tend to take the strongest ones they can find, and those assholes seem to enjoy breaking down defenses and corrupting them."

Yelena's expression was hard when Natasha looked up at her. "We kill them all. I don't care what it takes, we kill them all."

"We're vulnerable," James said slowly. "Our history with the Red Room..."

 _"We kill them all!"_ Yelena repeated shrilly.

Natasha put a calming hand on Yelena's arm and pulled her in close. "What if we play this smart, eh, Lena? Use resources out there we haven't been."

"What are you talking about?"

"The Avengers."

Yelena pulled back, hissing in anger. "No. They will try to take you, force you to go back with them again. I will not allow it!"

Cupping Yelena's face in her hands, Natasha gave her a level look. "Lena. Love, I told you. I'm with you. Clint understands that. He was the best friend I had there, he brought me in after the Red Room was gone. He knows I kept telling him I'd only say as long as it suited me. And it doesn't suit me anymore."

She didn't seem mollified. "They were in Japan. They'll want you back."

"Doesn't mean they can have me back, Lena."

She let out an irritated breath. "Natalia, you belong to me."

Natasha let her thumbs trail along Yelena's lips. "Lena. We can _use_ them. Use their numbers and strength and resources. It was too close in Japan. I'm not losing you, Yelena. If it means we work with them, we work with them. They offered, remember? I think it's about time that we took them up on that offer."

It was too brusque a way to introduce the concept, but Yelena didn't seem to take it the wrong way. She pouted and sulked. "But you're mine, Natasha. _My_ Natasha. Even the Winter Soldier doesn't know you as I do."

"I know," Natasha said softly. "But I will not lose you, not when we are now all back together again. It was so long, and I won't risk your death."

She pulled away from Natasha and looked to James. "And what do you think?"

"Tactically speaking, it would even the odds. Three of us against untold agents of unknown skill, plus all of their handlers..." The folly of this plan went unsaid. "We will need more weapons, more in number. To kill them all, we need _numbers."_

"I don't want you going back to them, Natasha," Yelena insisted.

Natasha gave her a sly smile. "There are ways to get their attention without being there."

***

Bruce had been working with Jane on various projects besides the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, even if that was her particular favorite. "It's not every day you get a man from another planet using the thing you study to prove its existence," she had said when he commented on that.

"And if you can stabilize harmonics on this end, you can go visit him whenever you like."

"There's that, too," Jane said, cheeks turning a little pink. "But then, there's also visiting Ketilve at the palace library. All that wealth of information going to waste just because the warriors there think it's beneath them to pick up a book. That's a crime, as far as I'm concerned."

"Probably for Ketilve, too," Bruce replied with a smile. "But in any case, you can't just put sensor arrays on a rooftop. I think we might have to talk to Tony about that."

"Why? Does he have a satellite or a space station I don't know about?"

"Somehow, I wouldn't put it past him," Bruce said, making Jane laugh. "There must be some kind of design flaw we're not thinking of."

On this particular occasion, the two of them were stuck on the analysis of an artifact that SHIELD had found in an archaeological dig that Hydra had tried to take over. The Academy students hadn't been able to make heads or tails of the metal, and some of the research labs had also drawn a blank. Bruce wasn't sure if they could do any better, but it was a nice side project that could distract them. Jane was scribbling furiously to try to make the math work, but it wasn't working. Her groans were starting to grate on Bruce's nerves. "We need a break," he said finally, pushing back from the desk.

Jane startled and looked up. "Oh. How long have we been at this?"

"Long enough for me to wonder if I can speak Greek. Which I don't, by the way."

She grimaced. "Maybe a change in scenery? Darcy used to have me do that a lot when I lost track of time. Coffee shops have closing times, so I'm not sitting in the same place overnight working on something."

"How is she?" Bruce asked as he stood up, hoping it would give Jane a not-so-subtle hint that he wanted an actual break, not just a break from his desk.

"Doing great. Last semester, and I think Pepper plans to hire her for their PR department."

"You miss her, I can tell," Bruce remarked. He bit back a laugh when Jane looked embarrassed and hastily stood up. He led the way out of the lab so they could head down to the elevators. The communal kitchen area would have worked, but he wanted a complete change of scenery to clear out his head. "It's okay, I don't feel bad."

"It's not that you're not a great friend," Jane said, giving him an awkward smile.

"I don't do the girl talk."

"Yeah!" Jane cried, clearly glad he didn't take that personally. "I mean, you know Thor, you're friends with him, but I can't talk to you about other stuff, because that would be weird. Wouldn't it? I don't know. You're a good guy to talk to, you really are, but it feels like sometimes you don't want that."

"Well, I'm not that kind of doctor," Bruce replied.

"Oh, I know _that,"_ Jane said with a laugh. "Eric had to see quite a few therapists after New Mexico to get clearance for SHIELD work after New York. No, I mean, a lot of guys don't want to talk about relationships. Or feelings. Or anything, some of the time."

"I think it's safe to say I'm hardly ordinary," Bruce told her self-deprecatingly as the elevator descended to the ground floor where the SI coffee shop was.

"Well, of course not. Not everyone knows about radiation and astrophysics."

"No, I meant—"

"Bruce," Jane said firmly, holding up a hand to stop him. "I know what you meant. Your control is pretty legendary as far as I'm concerned. You and he share a body and have different skill sets. I have a really hard time calling him a monster like you do."

He blinked in surprise. "Well, why wouldn't you?"

"If he was a monster, he would shift out of you right now and take out this building. He wouldn't stop because there are innocent people around, he wouldn't stop because there are friends next to him that might get hurt. He wouldn't let you help me with my research when there's nothing in it for him." She gave him a pointed look and shrugged. "Is he scary? Sure. I don't know how to reason with him, and I don't know if he'd understand me. But you know what? He helped out and did great on Asgard. And perfectly ordinary human beings can be scary, too. People are capable of great kindness and great evil. In that respect, he's just like everyone else on this planet."

Stunned, Bruce could only blink and stare at Jane. He swallowed, then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Hard facts, right?" Jane teased, poking him in the arm. "Now, if you _are_ interested in talking about relationships, that's perfectly okay and I guess I should've asked sooner. It would be nice to have some instant feedback instead of waiting for a Skype session after Darcy gets out of class or off of work." She flashed Bruce a wide smile. "I may be looking forward to her finishing up at Culver and getting to New York already."

"You'd want to have her input," Bruce temporized.

"True. But you've also been around the world. You have perspective she doesn't."

That gave Bruce pause again. He hadn't ever really considered it in that light before. He had been so focused on research and work and not Hulking out that he didn't think of the positives that had come out of his journey around the world. The Avengers accepted him as he was and respected him, but he admittedly kept wondering when the other shoe would drop, when others would see him as nothing more than a muscled monster.

His phone pinged as they exited the elevator. Bruce frowned at it as he looked at the app that he had installed at Tony's insistence. It tracked various communication signals that the team used or that SHIELD used. He kept a number of servers active for them to use in a stealthy manner, anywhere in the world; JARVIS monitored the access points and instantly alerted the entire team about any impending messages.

**Message detected on undisclosed server. Priority alpha-one, Avengers only.**

Frowning, he stopped walking and stepped to the side to check on the message. Jane frowned at him, but didn't interrupt; she never bothered to learn the features on her own phone or install apps, so she knew there wasn't much she could help him with.

"I think there's an office somewhere here that we can use. I'm pretty sure this is not going to be something the public should know about."

"Or," Jane began, steering him toward the coffee shop in the front of the building. "We can actually get some coffee for ourselves and a few others, then have a conference. You know how much they love conferencing on stuff." She flashed him a facetious grin when he groaned. "But seriously, if it's a super secret priority message, odds are good they'll want to be there to see what this thing is."

"After all, who else knows the access codes but us?"

"Exactly."

Armed with the rest of the team's usual coffee preferences, Bruce and Jane headed back upstairs with coffee trays. Bruce had JARVIS notify the others, so they all convened in one of the larger meeting rooms. Tony had already retrieved and decoded the message by the time they arrived with the coffee. Jane was about to head out when she noticed a flash of long blond hair. "Thor!" she cried happily, grinning at the sight of him. "I thought you were still on Asgard!"

"And I thought to surprise you," he said with a smile, reaching for her and tracing her cheek tenderly. "Unfortunately..."

"What? Oh, yeah, no, that's okay," she began, shaking her head and waving off his concern. "I'm not an Avenger."

"I vote yes," Tony piped up, raising his arm. "I'm sure Bruce would, too."

"But I'm no fighter," she protested.

"Maybe not, but you do science," Tony replied with a grin. "You're a Science Avenger. A Scivenger!" he laughed. "What do you think of that?"

"It sounds awful," Jane replied, but she laughed and grinned back at him, and plopped down into a seat at the table.

"You coordinated data very well on Asgard," Steve offered. "And you're the soul of discretion."

"Wow, people still say that?" Tony asked.

"Shut it, Stark," Clint interrupted before Steve could say something else or Tony could further the snark with something truly offensive. "Just go over the message."

Because if none of those present wrote it, that meant it had been from Natasha.

Jane sat down to Thor, who had a curve to his lips as he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. She sat up straight, at full attention, as if not wanting the others to regret considering her an Avenger. Bruce sat down in the seat between her and Clint. Steve was seated on his other side, then Tony. "Hey, where's Sam?" she asked, looking around the room.

"On call at the VA," Steve supplied helpfully. "He'd be here otherwise."

The encrypted message was up on the main view screen next to Tony. He couldn't figure out how to decrypt it, but Clint did so easily. Bruce sipped at his coffee and contemplated the sparse words, tuning out others' murmurs.

 _We need help, are overwhelmed._ Numbers afterward had to be coordinates.

"Okay, Legolas," Tony began, gesturing toward the floating message. "What the hell does she mean by this? It's some secret code, right?"

Clint sighed and rubbed his eyes. Bruce frowned a little to see how tired and worn out he seemed to be. Though he had friends combing the internet and all the international databases on crimes that might lead to the Red Room. He was the type to double check everything, to try to come up with his own theories. Most of the others seemed to bypass him when discussing anything other than Natasha, but he was a sharp mind and had a keen eye for interpersonal connections. He knew when to back off, when to press, when to sidestep. Usually it was buried under humor and snark, making his observations a little more palatable for the listener.

"Nat and I were Strike Team Delta," Clint began slowly, letting his hands fall to the table. "As in, one of the top teams once they turned her loose of the leash. Most others wouldn't work with her that soon after she joined up with SHIELD, and Coulson thought it was hilarious that I would be stuck with her after I brought her in. But we got along real well after a few hiccups, the usual getting to know you stuff. It was at that point that Coulson gave us a code system to go along with the team name."

"Wait, it wasn't something you made up?" Steve asked, frowning.

"Nope. We got it from Coulson, and as far as we know, the only other one that knows the system is Fury himself. It's for the sensitive shit nobody wants to own up to."

"So what does that mean? It's not just a cry for help, is it?"

"Nope." Clint shook his head. "Yes, there's a need for help, but the verbiage carries other codes along with it. So yes, she needs help and they're overwhelmed. But the underlying message in that particular wording means that it's a top level danger site, go in hot and figure out your own extraction plan."

"And in this case?" Steve asked, looking at him in concern. "What would that mean for the rest of us in this scenario?"

"It means that Natasha's calling us in to help her with a particular target they've picked. The three of them can't do it on their own."

"After Japan, I'm not surprised," Steve intoned.

"Wait, you're not seriously considering _killing people_ are you?" Tony cried, incredulous.

"Run the coordinates," Clint replied, voice hard. "She would _never_ ask me to kill someone without a strict kill order. She would _never_ ask the rest of you to do it. Which means there's an angle here where we can work without compromising ourselves. She will compromise the hell out of herself, but she would never put someone else into that position if she can help it. She's not that way."

"If she can help it," Bruce echoed, giving him a sad expression.

"She's in control of her faculties. She wouldn't use the Strike Team code for something I'm not comfortable with authorizing." Clint's jaw tightened as he stared at Tony. "You seem to forget just how much Natasha does for others without ever thinking of herself or her own safety. You're acting like she chose this situation, like she _wanted_ to be kidnapped and warped by the Red Room as a kid, like she _asked_ for Yelena to fixate on her so hard. If she can bring them in, if we can undo the damage that the Red Room did to them, then by all means, _I will help her do it._ Nobody deserves to go through that shit, nobody. I don't care whose side they're on, you don't fuck up little kids and then leave 'em alone."

Something in Tony's expression softened, and likely everyone was contemplating just why that situation would make Clint feel so impassioned. Bruce merely nodded at Clint, feeling his own past loom large. None of them had stable, warm, upbringings, did they? Well, Steve had before the Depression. Thor thought he had a loving family, and Loki was a ball of crazy a hair's breadth from falling apart. Bruce didn't talk about his family much, so Jane hadn't volunteered much of her own history. But they couldn't be terribly close if she could pick up and move to New Mexico and then Tromsø in order to work on the science. Her fellow researchers and Darcy seemed to be her family now.

And as Tony put it, she was a Scivenger. So she belonged at the table, too.

"They messed with memories, didn't they? I think I remember someone saying that," Jane said into the uncomfortable silence. She waited until Clint ponderously nodded. "Well, doing something like that can't be easy. Memories are scattered throughout the mind. I mean, I'm an astrophysicist, but I did take psychology and biology courses as an undergrad for a change of pace from theoretical physics." She gave a self-conscious twitch at Tony's interested glance, but didn't otherwise respond. "So, there are different ways that memories are encoded in the brain, I remember that much. But to completely wipe out memories like that, they would have to use drugs and probably electric current, something like ECT. That wipes out some memory. If they put someone in a suggestible state, they can remake the mind into whatever they want."

"Something that some branches of AIM and Hydra were doing."

"Hydra's been decimated and SHIELD is working on the rest of them," Steve announced. "AIM is scattered and trying to recapture the field. They're getting picked up as they do that."

"Which means it's someone else, someone new," Bruce said, more of a question than a statement.

"Any number of terror organizations want to step in," Clint said quietly. "It's part of the problem, right now. Terrorism is too rampant."

"But which ones have done work on memory alteration and implantation?" Jane pressed.

"The Red Room," Clint replied immediately.

At the same time, Steve said "Hydra."

"Throwing out those two, who else would it be?" Bruce asked. "As much as we should consider all possibilities, I think it's fair to say that those organizations are not behind this."

Tony had been working his way through notes and files on his StarkPad. "I might—"

Thor leaned in close to Jane, patting her hand with a sweet smile on her face. "I did miss the way you could find the heart of a problem and seek a solution."

"About that heart thing," Tony interrupted. "It's not quite that."

"What are you talking about?" Steve asked, confused.

"MI6 database," he replied in clipped tones. "Don't ask how I got it, so I don't have to tell you. I'm sure Dread Pirate Fury isn't going to be pleased with me. Anyway, they have notes on a bunch of different organizations that brainwash their members, send them out to do their dirty work." He looked up from the pad. "That seems to be the problem we're dealing with, right?"

"Aye," Thor said, leaning forward in anticipation. "What say your compatriots?"

Tony threw up a virtual screen, then arced his search results up onto it for everyone to see. "So, we've got deadly ladies of various persuasions, some psycho killers, jihadists, other religious whack jobs of different flavors... There's a lot out there to deal with."

"Cross reference the coordinates Natasha gave us. She wouldn't send us into a minefield without a way to narrow it down and prepare," Steve said.

"The coordinates are for Fort Worth, Texas," Tony announced after a moment. He looked up in confusion. "I don't get it."

"There's got to be something there that terrorists would want. I mean, it's not necessarily a place of historic significance, is it?" Steve asked.

Jane immediately set her tablet to Google and started looking up Fort Worth. "Airport, museums, universities, multinational corporations..." She continued to scroll through results. "Oil. Natural gas. Military outposts. FAA and FBI offices. Um... Federal women's prison. Close to Dallas, if that counts as historic. Sister city to Budapest, Hungary."

"I think that's a bit to go on," Steve began.

"The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has an office there. And it's not too far from the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas," Jane continued.

"Well. Military, intelligence _and_ financial targets," Bruce said with a slight edge to his voice. "When it rains, it pours, doesn't it?"

"It will be our intention to seek the reasoning behind their journey to Texas," Thor told him. "I believe there is much more to this than we know."

"Terrorists brainwashing people into becoming their agents," Clint murmured. "It's definitely something Natasha would want to stop. It's partly why she was gunning for Hydra so hard."

"So with Hydra out of commission for the moment," Steve said, "she has a new target."

"Looks like it," Clint agreed.

"Then it looks like we're all heading to Fort Worth," Steve declared, standing. "Everyone ready and willing to check it out?"

Jane raised her hand. "Not me. So not the fighting type. I'll analyze the heck out of your data set, though," she added with a self-deprecating smile.

Thor gave her an indulgent kiss on the temple. "I will find you all the data you like."

"Endearing. And odd. But mostly endearing," Tony announced. "I'm in."

Aside from Jane, everyone else at the table was willing to go. Natasha would be there, and she needed their help. That was reason enough to go, but helpless innocents getting corrupted against their will? It was added incentive to fight.

***

Gabrielle knew logically she had to have a history prior to her work with the Agency. There were whispers among the other agents that they all had prior histories, may have worked for other agencies, may have had _lives._ But one theory went that they had given up those past lives to be a blank slate on behalf of the Agency. No memories to fall back on and make her balk at orders. No way to question, no way to screw up.

Only, she _knew_ this didn't ring true. She didn't know when she started to question the Agency's methods, when she started keeping track of their tactics and what happened to her fellow agents. All of the women shared a dormitory between missions, all of them whispered and read between the lines. Some whispers abruptly stopped, some continued.

She didn't know if Gabrielle was her real name or a cover granted by the Agency. It wouldn't take much to look it up and check, but she also didn't want to know.

If she wasn't real, what else wasn't real?

Janet once said the Agency wasn't called that by outsiders. They were Black Spectre in MI6's files, due to their black uniforms and masks. Clare had called her a liar. Then three days later, Janet disappeared on an assignment she should have come back from.

Gabrielle remembered that, remembered how Janet laughed and smiled in the mess hall. "Look at us," she'd said. "All alike except for height, facial features and coloring. It's like an assembly line for agents, don't you think?"

An assembly line for agents. Black Spectre. MI6. Untimely disappearances.

It didn't add up, and questioning it led to awkward glances and the risk of disappearing; this might not be the life she should have had, but Gabrielle didn't want to lose it, either. Janet had been a good friend of hers, sharing her face cream and the relaxers for their hair. Clare had always been a jealous cow, belittling their darker skin and brown eyes, as if being a precious porcelain doll was anything other than an accident of birth.

Then again, there were also shadows behind Clare's eyes. Maybe she didn't think the others could see it, but Gabrielle could. She took note of things like that once she was more aware that they existed. Clare acted like a favorite agent, but there was a slight hitch in her step after a long meeting with her handlers. She sat down a shade too delicately. Her eyes were glassy and a little vacant. Gabrielle was willing to bet there were welts and bruises on her body, though Clare always insisted she was fine, she was okay, the missions had gone well. Even when there hadn't been any missions at all.

It didn't add up. Suspicion grew, festered, poisoned her mind.

She smiled at her handlers as always, accepted the files and summaries leading up to the black bag missions. Enemies of the state had to be subdued; she never asked which state, what the crimes were. Files were heavily redacted, telling her nothing about _why_ they were enemies of the state.

 _Why?_ That was the operative question.

Miguel was by far her favorite handler. He didn't leer at her, didn't behave in anything but a professional manner. If they were all like him, smartly dressed, polite and prompt, she would have dismissed her concerns as silly fantasies borne of boredom. He was one of the few that acted in the manner befitting an Agency, however, so her suspicions only grew.

He had handed her the latest batch of files, and she didn't have a good enough excuse to linger and question him about them. Her thoughts completely blanked at the sight of his expectant look. "You're married," she blurted, seeing the photo on the desk. "I didn't know that."

Now the expectant look turned indulgent. "Agent Figueroa," he began.

"I've said that before, haven't I?" Gabrielle guessed. She gave him an apologetic look, and held onto the files even tighter. "I forget things like that. But I'm on point for the mission," she added abruptly, not wanting him to think less of her.

Laughing, he nodded. "It's all right, Agent Figueroa. You have other things on your mind. I don't expect you to remember my personal life."

Gabrielle nodded gratefully. "Still, it's rather rude of me, isn't it?" She reached out toward the photo and picked it up once he nodded at her. She looked closely at the wedding photo, smiling fondly at the obvious happiness on their faces. There was something vaguely familiar about her, something that sent a shiver down her spine. To cover it, she put the photo down and kept the smile on her face. "How long have you been married?"

"Almost five years," Miguel said with a proud smile. He nodded toward the door. "Don't worry about it. It's not like you've ever met Jen."

Gabrielle left, and it wasn't until that evening that she realized what had been so disconcerting about seeing Miguel's wife Jen.

She looked exactly like Janet, but with blonde hair.

Janet had disappeared less than a year ago, which meant either Janet had _also_ been married to Miguel and had merely kept it hidden, or Miguel was just as affected as the agents seemed to be. No wife would choose to stay in the dorms or eat at the mess hall if she had a husband to go home to, right? Gabrielle certainly would choose to sleep at home in her own bed, especially if she had a spouse to sleep with.

If handlers had their memories altered as well as agents, who was the one in charge? Who was the ultimate boss? _Someone_ had to have their memories intact.

But to even ask would be signing her own death warrant. Perhaps she would be recycled into someone's wife if someone was kind. She didn't count on that, and couldn't. Whatever she had been once upon a time, right now she was a capable agent. She knew better than to rely on luck, and would have to create her own.

The files sent her to Fort Worth, Texas. There were certain employees of the FBI that had to be taken out. A colleague would be tasked with taking out dissenting members of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing before they destabilized the treasury. Clare was being sent in to mimic one of the Bureau employees that worked on the printing floor to ensure that the US currency printed correctly.

Gabrielle hadn't seen Clare in the mess or dormitory in two days. If their superiors were indeed erasing memories and changing things, that would be the time to do it. And if they were truly doing this, then Gabrielle couldn't trust that her orders were actually what they looked like on the surface. So if FBI agents were meant to be killed because they were enemies of the state, and ordinary treasury workers were also going to be killed, it likely was _not_ to save the US economy. While she was no expert, Gabrielle was sure that eliminating one of the printing offices would start to destabilize the country's economy. From there, it was only a matter of time before the other world economies started to fall like dominoes.

But she had nothing but suspicions, and vague ones at that.

She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. There was no use in notifying anyone. She would be hunted down and caught as a traitor to the Agency. Erasing her would be the kindest option, but traitors never fared well in history. She would have to make her own luck, would have to figure out how to stop Clare and the other colleague that hadn't been selected yet.

Wait. That was it. That was _perfect._

She returned to Miguel's office. "Sir? I had an idea for the Fort Worth situation," she said, all smiles and eagerness. "The third slot hasn't been assigned yet, has it?"

Miguel looked up from his computer. "No, not yet. Why do you ask?"

"Well, Rita has been working hard at the range, and I don't think she's had much field experience yet. This seems like such an open and shut case that she could possible start to get that field experience along with myself and Clare. I haven't seen her, by the way, so I couldn't run this idea past her."

"Oh, she's in Reconditioning," Miguel replied with a vague smile. "She'll be ready to join you when you leave tomorrow."

"Ah. Of course," she said with a nod. The smile on Miguel's face was disconcerting, and she pushed it aside.

"I think you have a point about Rita. She's got to test real world applications soon enough. This is a much larger operation than a three-woman team, so it's definitely safe to add her."

Gabrielle frowned. "It is? But the files—"

"You were given background on only your own piece of it."

Her mouth snapped shut. "Of course. I'm sorry, sir."

"Think nothing of it. You couldn't have anticipated that. I do appreciate how forward thinking you're trying to be."

She pasted a complacent smile on her face. "I want to further the Agency."

"With that attitude, you'll go far, Agent Figueroa."

"Oh? Is that how you advanced in the Agency?" she asked innocently.

Something sharp and ugly reared up in his eyes, but she forced herself not to react. Whether he was innocent or not, the assessing glance shook her more than she wanted to admit.

"No, there was a separate track."

Gabrielle nodded obediently. Praising him now would be over the top, so she didn't even bother to try. "Is there anything I should anticipate when we leave tomorrow?"

The odd look that had come over Miguel's features was completely smoothed out and gone. He smiled, his usual affable self. "Definitely gunning for advancement, Agent Figueroa?"

She laughed, but didn't relax her guard in the slightest. "The Agency is my life, sir."

"Good girl. Good luck tomorrow."

She nodded and left the office, her gut roiling in terror. If the Agency was sending in more than a three woman team, something big was being planned for Fort Worth. Replacing a Bureau worker was only a small part of it. Either that, or they were running scared.

But what could scare the Agency this way?

***  
***


	2. Freedom of Choice

Yelena took a look through James' scope and grinned. She pulled back from the window of the hotel room they had taken, flashing that bright grin at Natasha. "It worked."

Natasha huffed and rolled her eyes. "Of course it worked. Jerome Beecham is a misogynist and polygamist. Not to mention batshit crazy and interested in bringing down the entire financial system of the United States." She quirked up a corner of her mouth, not quite smiling. "So if one of his wives got away from his control and is in hiding with the FBI and working at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing..."

"So they have no idea what they're in for," Yelena said, pleased. She looked back through the scope, seeing the Black Spectre agents dressed all in black and nearly swarming over the FBI offices. "I suppose this isn't their entire force?"

"Probably not."

"We'll need to capture one alive to find out where they hold their other prisoners," James pointed out. He was sitting cross legged on the carpeted floor behind them, calm as further intel was gathered. His weapons had already been sharpened, cleaned and primed, ready to be used at a moment's notice. He had even done the same for Natasha's and Yelena's weapons.

"I see one farther to the side. Her expression... it's not as blank as the others' are."

"She must be starting to get self aware," Natasha said, frowning. She was sitting on the queen sized bed, and looked up from the blueprints of the FBI building. "That would be the one to take, then. She won't fight us."

"Maybe we can even get her to join us," Yelena said, straightening and leaving the window. She handed the sniper's rifle back to James. "We could use recruits."

"There you go," Natasha said with a smile. "Should you go get her, or should I?"

Yelena nodded at James. "Tranq her, we'll pick her up as we double check that your message got through to your Avengers."

"They're smart enough to get the hint."

"You think so?"

"There's a Quinjet parked at DFW. What do you think?"

With a sigh, Yelena sat down next to Natasha and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "I think you are clever and they are not. I think it's still a mistake to rely on someone else. And I think that we need to move on this quickly. Those women won't die or defect on their own."

Natasha grasped Yelena by the chin, fingers tight. "Defect."

"If they can't be turned, they're a liability," Yelena replied coldly. Something shifted behind her eyes, a darkness that sent chills down Natasha's spine. Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone and Yelena smiled at her prettily. Natasha didn't doubt what she had seen, but she didn't know what it meant.

Yelena was unraveling, deteriorating, sliding into someone that Natasha couldn't recognize. Yet she still couldn't choose one over the other. There had to be a way to fix this mess. There had to be a way to pull her back.

Even if it killed her.

***

Last minute, Steve elected to stay behind in New York to assist Sam with the support group. "I'll let you know if any other signals or messages come through," he told them, a regretful expression on his face. "But if something happens and you _do_ need me..."

"We'll call you, Cap," Clint remarked with a nod. He realized that Steve changed his mind the instant Bruce brought up the possibility of Yelena Belova and the Winter Soldier being present along with Natasha.

"I'm sorry," Steve began, true regret in his voice. "It didn't seem to matter before, but after Bucky hurt Sam as badly as he did..."

Clint clapped Steve on the shoulder. "No, I get it. If we can't bring him in, you don't want to put him down. I get it. I'm going for Natasha, but I'll keep an eye out. She'll need some friendly faces. And we'll let you know if your friend is any easier to get along with."

The relief on his face was telling; it was easier to deal with disgruntled vets than a former best friend that no longer remembered him at all.

During the flight from JFK to Dallas Fort Worth airport, Clint was on the phone with his friend Zoe. There were no distinct threats made to any particular location in Fort Worth, but digging deeper into military and FBI records did show a transfer request for agents to the area, especially those from the antiterrorism units with training in brainwashing techniques to undo potential damage. "My guess is? You want the Federal building," Zoe announced cheerfully. "Also, Stark finally came through on that T3 line. It's pretty sweet."

"Glad you like it," Clint told her. He could imagine Zoe flashing him a huge smile as she described the speed and facility she had for her pet programs. Most of it went over his head; he wasn't an idiot by any means, but she was talking about various subtle hacking techniques that he had no understanding of. Natasha would have understood it all, and that just made him miss her more. Well, that and she was a far better copilot than Tony Stark.

"Federal building's the likely target," Clint announced when he terminated the connection, as Tony wouldn't have heard Zoe's end of the conversation. It had been piped into Clint's headset only, and his end of the conversation was fairly nondescript.

"Think Dread Pirate Fury would want to smooth the way for us to get in there?" Tony asked. Aside from the nickname, Tony seemed to be far more serious and subdued.

"It's not exactly a sanctioned op."

"So that would be a no."

"That would be a not very likely. You can try calling."

"He doesn't like hearing from me."

"He doesn't like hearing from me, either."

Tony snorted, shaking his head a little. "So we're at an impasse."

"Unless he'd agree for Thor's sake?" Clint offered. "If Steve was here, we'd have more of a guarantee to get in."

"I thought Coulson was the fanboy?"

"Oh, he is. Big time." Clint grinned but didn't take his eyes off the sky. "He even corrected the Smithsonian exhibit, did you know that? Anyway, Steve's all kinds of gracious about it, but it's kind of hilarious to watch Coulson try to contain that much squee."

"If the Winter Soldier's there..."

"Try to take him alive. But not at the expense of _our_ lives."

Tony sighed. "If it's like Japan was, I don't want to be the one to tell Captain America his ex-best friend is dead."

"Then let's hope it doesn't come to that."

***

Last minute, Pauline requested a mission switch with Gabrielle, and she couldn't think of a good excuse not to accept it. Pauline was more slender and waifish, more like the woman Gabrielle was supposed to impersonate. This was how she found herself shunted into the larger attack force of Agents, who were set to attack the FBI offices. _Traitors to the country? Not this many, not that likely,_ she thought to herself. Discussing her concerns with others wasn't safe, and she had no wish to disappear or become someone else. Whoever Gabrielle Figueroa was, she _liked_ her. She didn't want her accomplishments to be erased.

The other agents we all in skintight black tactical gear, matte black weapons strapped to their bodies. Hair was pulled tightly back from their faces, and every face was ultimately covered with a mask that left only the eyes and forehead visible. The bottom of their masks had rebreather apparatuses built into them; a favorite tactic was to start with tear gas or some kind of knockout gas, then storm the building. Any agent could be a trooper, but usually only specialists were used in the smaller teams. Why was Pauline being shifted? Did they suspect her?

Gabrielle had been so careful, had tried hard not to give any suspicion that she was aware of the inconsistencies. Had she somehow still given herself away?

She attended the briefing, then piled into one of the vans set to attack the FBI offices. There was a separate team to hit the Bureau of Engraving, and a much larger team was set to storm the Federal Reserve. She wasn't supposed to know the details of other missions, but she had working ears and could hear the excited whispers in the barracks the night before. They _believed_ their handlers, thought their orders would ultimately save the country. Hell, they never even asked what the name of the Agency was, what their role was even _for._

They had to be Black Spectre. They had to be.

She was a good and capable agent. She knew what she was doing. There was no way she was incompetent, no way she would fail if tested on field knowledge or how to handle herself if the mission was compromised. The problem was, now that she was self-aware and questioning the entire Agency, she wasn't sure if she wanted to go through with the mission. This was why they erased memories, why they wanted their agents to be blank slates. No other Agency in the world did something like this, did they? Not legitimate ones, anyway.

The other agents moved in quickly and confidently according to plan. Gabrielle hung back at first, but that would appear suspicious he dove right in to and get her marked. So she dove right in with the others, mask firmly in place. It was chaos, controlled chaos, the federal agents dropping quickly as the gas overtook them. The ones that were a little quicker on their feet and covered their mouths got some shots off; Gabrielle hadn't thought they would carry sidearms into the office building, but what did she know about their procedures? They hadn't been briefed on that, only the protocols to disrupt their business and destabilize their security, then to shut down their servers.

Out of nowhere came an archer, Iron Man and the tall, blond Asgardian that had been in the news lately. Gabrielle couldn't remember his name, but that hardly mattered. The archer saw her flinch and duck when she caught sight of his bow. Apparently he and another agent could think fast on their feet; they ripped the masks off two of her fellow agents and used them to keep from coughing and passing out. She backed away from them, intending to head to safer ground. Why were the Avengers here? They ratcheted up the danger factor, and they weren't part of any briefing. Her fellow agents didn't seem to care about the changing targets, throwing themselves into the fray with gusto. She recognized Kendra by her cornrows and midnight black skin, and she was being utterly vicious. The archer may not have wanted to kill her, but she had no compunctions about trying to kill him.

And then his companion bellowed, skin rippling and changing color. _The Hulk._

Gabrielle wanted to turn tail and run. The archer leaped out of the way of Kendra's gun and knife, then cornered Gabrielle. "What the hell is going on?"

"I think they're called Black Spectre," Gabrielle said, moving quickly to punch him in the solar plexus. As he doubled over, she caught his head and rammed it into her knee. "I won't let them remake me. And I won't die for them. Not now, not ever."

A repulsor blast hit her, sending her flying across a few desks, fetching up into the wall. Gabrielle lay there, stunned, a sharp ringing in her ears. Concussion. She watched as Kendra cut into the Hulk's arm, heedless of the risk. There were four fighting the Asgardian, the three that previously targeted him lying crumpled on the floor after he had swung his hammer. A sweep of the Hulk's arm not only sent Kendra flying into two other Spectre agents, but a few of the FBI agents as well. They were trying, the fools, but a few of their colleagues were collapsed on the floor in ungainly heaps. Gabrielle couldn't tell if they were dead or not.

The Avengers had been trying to keep their attacks nonlethal, while the Spectre agents didn't have the same compunctions. The damage only seemed to enrage the Hulk even more, and his roars were frightening to hear. Her other agents kept piling in, kept trying to shoot and slice and hit their way through the Avengers and FBI agents. Gabrielle tried to push herself to her feet and stumble toward the stairwell, away from the fray.

Near the ground level, a blonde woman of average height with sharp blue eyes saw her. "You're self-aware," she said, the satisfied tone in her voice taking an ugly undertone. It reminded her of that startling look she had seen in Miguel's eyes.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The woman only grinned, her teeth sharp and expression hungry. "You can leave them, come work with the Red Room."

"If I leave, I want to be free," Gabrielle spit, leaning against the wall for balance. "I won't be beholden to anyone. I won't let you touch my mind."

Her gaze didn't waver. "They already broke you, didn't they? I don't have to do it again. They gave you the skills I want, what you need to survive. I want them gone. If you want to live, you want to be free, the only way to get it is through me."

"Or else what?"

The sharp tactical knife in her hand glinted in the stairwell light. "Do I need to spell it out? You seem like a clever enough young woman."

"What do you want from me?"

"For you to join us, of course."

"They won't let me go."

"They'll assume you're dead."

"Not without a body," Gabrielle disagreed. "They'll hunt me down."

"And repurpose you when they catch you, I'm sure," the blonde drawled. She grinned her shark's grin when Gabrielle was frozen in place. "They all work the same, these organizations. Take your mind away, reshape you into something different, take what they want, _play,_ create a siege in your own mind. Oh yes, I know how that works."

She came in closer, halting Gabrielle's progress in trying to stagger away. "I can interrupt that cycle for you," she promised, tracing the curve of her cheek through the mask with the blade's edge. "Help me destroy them. I can set you free."

It was work with her or die. She could see it now. Whether it was Black Spectre, Red Room, whoever else was out there, it didn't matter. Gabrielle would never be free of these kinds of people, never able to figure out who or what she was besides an agent.

"Then set me free."

Gabrielle sharply turned her head, forcing the tactical knife's blade down her chin. The edge sliced across her throat, only a whispery sting as it broke through skin.

The blonde stepped back, keening in anger and frustration. Behind her mask, Gabrielle only smiled. Such a small, futile gesture of defiance, but it was defiance just the same.

And she was finally free of all of them on her own terms.

***

"Yelena!" Natasha cried. "You were supposed to recruit members, not kill them!"

"You came up empty handed," she replied negligently.

"They were incoherent messes once I got past the mission programming. They sent in blank slates. I had nothing to recruit! James was at the Bureau, and none of those three were able to say anything coherent. The job was compartmentalized, it seems."

"Where is he now, then?"

The two were alone in their hotel room, and Natasha was pacing back and forth. Yelena sat on the bed, a serene smile on her face as Natasha replied "The Federal Reserve."

"So we are alone together," Yelena purred. She frowned when Natasha didn't respond as she hoped, continuing to pace. "They aren't important, Natalia," Yelena chided.

"Don't you think someone said that about us as we were training? Don't you think someone in their organization already thinks that of them? You were supposed to recruit one so that we could have intel. They need to be able to choose!"

"And if they choose death? That one chose death. To bleed out in a stairwell."

"Doesn't that tell you anything about how they treat those women? Don't tell me you think they're disposable. Don't tell me you think they should be abused as we were."

Yelena's reply was interrupted by James' return. He didn't remark on the tension between the two women, only tossing a GPS and several sets of ID cards and access keys.

"How did you get those?" Yelena asked, interested.

"I pretended to be the commanding officer. They handed it over and reported that base camp for them was in a compound outside of Austin. There's another base located in San Francisco and one in Atlanta."

"Did they tell you what kind of numbers they have?"

"Hundreds total, but they'll have to recruit heavily to replenish local numbers. The antics at the FBI building made it to local news."

"Dammit," Natasha groaned. "We kept the news off in here."

"All damage is attributed to Black Spectre. Apparently, one of their number confirmed it to an Avenger as they fought."

"Is that going to make it harder for us to take apart one of their bases?" Yelena asked, brows knit in concern. Her features relaxed when James shook his head. "Well, then. We shouldn't have to worry about anything, then."

Natasha took a deep breath, then two. "We're closest to Austin, and that one would most likely be depleted. If that works well, then we can consider San Francisco and Atlanta."

Yelena rolled her eyes. "You worry too much, Natalia."

"It's kept us alive so far."

Unable to negate that truth, Yelena merely sighed and stretched out onto the bed to rest. There would be time enough to argue and assert her authority.

***

Once everyone was back in New York, the Avengers all assembled in the common area to go over the details of the fight. They had to make statements for the FBI, but this was a far less formal debriefing. Tony poured himself and Thor a drink. "So. More female assassins. I'm starting to think I got into the wrong business."

"Can it, Stark," Clint huffed, irritated.

"What? Don't you like the thought of a couple hot ladies getting it on?" Tony asked, expression lighting up. "I mean, I'd never leave Pepper, she knows that, and she'd have my head on a platter if I did anything stupid to fuck it up. But the _thought_ of it..."

"Nope," Clint replied, leaning back in the couch.

"So what does it for you, then? Two dudes?" Tony pressed.

"Friend Stark," Thor began. "This is quite an ignoble line of questioning to your comrade."

"Nothing," Clint answered, waving off Thor's concern. "I have no interest whatsoever in something like that."

Tony actually choked on his drink. "Wait, what? No interest. In sex. As in none?"

"Nope," Clint repeated easily, shrugging. "It's not important to me."

Bruce had been sitting quietly in the corner of the room, visibly tired after the last battle. "It's called asexuality, Tony. Look it up." Normally he tried to stay out of the way of conversations like this, but Thor looked almost upset at Tony's way of needling others.

"I just don't... I mean... _No interest._ None. That makes no sense to me."

Clint rolled his eyes. "Do you like using a gun, Tony?"

"Well, no."

"Why not? Guns work well. They get the job done. You can take someone out for good, while a repulsor blast lets them get back up again."

Tony seemed to realize where Clint was going with that example. "But... none?" Clint shook his head. "Ever try it?"

"Sure. Didn't like it."

Blinking in surprise at Clint's casual tone, Tony slammed back the rest of his drink. "Oh. Wow. I can't say I ever had that response before."

"You're sexual." Clint shrugged. "I'm not. Doesn't matter to me. It's not a big deal."

"Wow. Okay." Tony poured himself another drink. "Drink?"

"Too tired," Clint replied with a shake of his head. "It'll knock me right out."

Thor sighed and sat down on the couch next to Clint. "I fear for our comrade. Those assassins we fought... They seemed most unnatural. Like a berserker on my world, fueled by rage and not much else, no mind of their own."

Bruce's gaze sharpened. "Wait. That might be what happened. They were Black Spectre, right?"

"One of the ladies did mention the name," Thor agreed.

"Tony, go rifling through SHIELD's database. If the Red Room has mind manipulation, and AIM did it with that doctor in San Marino..."

"Son of a bitch," Tony swore, catching on. "Yeah, I'm on it."

"If they're brainwashing," Bruce began, leaning forward a little in his seat, "It'll be like what Jane said. They have different options to do it. Drugs, sensory deprivation, machinery..."

"Hydra had a lot of random machinery in their labs whenever we raided them," Clint supplied, not feeling tired any longer. "Shit, what if some of that was their attempt to brainwash people into fighting for them? We think that's what happened to Steve's buddy, after all. He had no idea who Steve even was. You can't fake that kind of blank look."

"And Natasha did say it was done to her in the Red Room," Bruce said, looking to Clint for confirmation. At his nod, Bruce sighed. "So we can probably assume the same was done to Yelena during her tenure there."

Thor blew out an uneasy breath. "Are there no bounds to their treachery?"

"Apparently not," Clint replied, shaking his head. "I'm not even high enough clearance to get that kind of info out of Natasha's file. Dunno if I want my friend Zoe to try to hack it..."

"I'll do it!" Tony offered, raising his hand like an errant schoolboy. "I'd love to hack SHIELD, yes, I would. And if I'm looking up Black Spectre, why not Red Room and Natasha, too?"

"It might be under her birth name," Clint replied, rubbing at his jaw tiredly. As quickly as the spike of adrenaline had hit him, it was gone. Stupid fast acting stuff.

"I'll look under every permutation of her name, then," Tony offered as he continued poking at his everpresent Starkpad. "Just for completeness."

He could be a complete asshole, but at other times Tony was a stand up guy, as Steve liked to say. Clint just wished the asshole moments were at a minimum.

 _Hang tight, Natasha,_ Clint thought tiredly. _We'll dig you out of this mess._

***

When Loki heard about the fighting in Fort Worth, he was livid. "You didn't even think to ask for my help? How did you think you were going to retrieve Natasha from them? This was a prime target for Yelena. Why else would Natasha have provided you fools with coordinates?" he raged, eyes flashing at the entirety of the common room.

Tony bristled at the _fools_ comment. "Look, Horns. You weren't there, and you have no right to go around dissing everyone else for what you think should have happened. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback. _But you weren't there._ I get it, you were doing healing mojo on Sam and whatever else at the VA. That's good karma, and it'll win you brownie points with Odin. I get it. But you don't have the right to yell at us."

"You didn't even look for her!"

"The place was a maze," Bruce said tiredly, cutting off Tony's inevitable diatribe. "If she was there, she was in hiding. I think it's far more likely, she sent us there to try to stop the Black Spectre assassins before they could do damage. We saved a lot of lives in the FBI offices, but there were still a number of them that those assassins killed."

"What do I care about your mortal agencies?"

"Because they could help us track her down," Bruce replied.

Clint had been very quiet up until now. "My friend hacked their system. Most of the agents were up in the area where the assassins were. She wasn't just setting us up to stop Black Spectre. I think they're trying to recruit agents. That's why Natasha sent us there."

"And you get all this from a dead assassin?" Tony asked in disbelief.

"It could be join or die. The manner of death was too different from that of the others. Too clinical and cold, not like a wound gotten in the heat of battle. And she was too far away from the others, too."

"This still brings us no closer to Natasha."

"If they're recruiting new members, though, this changes their tactics. They're working on Black Spectre right now. C'mon, Tony, I know you hacked MI6 records. What do they say are the locations of their offices?"

"Unconfirmed?" Tony clarified. Clint and Bruce nodded, Loki glared at him. "Somewhere in the south, the western coastline, and maybe somewhere in the middle of Texas. Their guesses are based on triangulation algorhythms from captured agents and attacks confirmed to be done by Black Spectre assassins." He brought up a virtual map projected onto the wall from his StarkPad. He circled all the areas that MI6 had labeled of interest.

"We can always check out those areas," Clint began.

"No offense, Legolas," Tony said, shaking his head, "but it's going to be another Japan if you do it that way. They know where they're going, we don't."

"The only way we'd get the jump on them is if we know where all the locations are and stake them out." Bruce shook his head. "But I doubt we'd have more information than MI6."

"I could scry locations and open portals," Loki offered. He managed to look innocent when the others looked at him incredulously. "Magic has its uses, after all."

"How would you scry something like this?" Tony asked, brows furrowed in concern. "Is it like in movies, with dangling a gaudy crystal on a chain? Because that sounds totally tacky."

Loki looked at him in disdain, and Clint covered his laughter with a cough. "There are ways of using _galdr_ or walking Yggdrasil to find people."

"I thought you didn't have the tie with Natasha anymore?" Bruce asked.

His expression darkened. "I don't. But I know the shape her _spá_ should take. I can find her once I focus on those areas."

Bruce shot Tony a "why not?" expression as he shrugged. "Worth a shot."

Nodding sharply at them, Loki left the common area to prepare. This time, to be sure that he wouldn't get lost in potential realities, he would have to make an anchor.

***

The outer room to Loki's suite was just as empty as the day he was assigned the area. He never bothered to get furniture for it, and now was glad that he had a large enough area to work. The pile of scrolls he was using as reference was in the center of the area, and he had large pillar candles made of pure beeswax, no scent to adulterate the workings. Human mages often used salt or silver to mark the area on the floor that would be used, but Loki didn't need to use that tactic to ground himself.

Taking up one of his favorite knives, Loki remembered fighting with her in an abandoned warehouse, the first time they had fought hand to hand, how he had marked her afterward, how he had first sank into her flesh. _Natasha._ How had he come to need her so much? It had never been his intention before. Before he could think twice about it, Loki slashed at his forearm, and let his blood drip into a crystal bowl inscribed with runes of focus and memory. When he had enough, he sealed the wound and turned to contemplate the magic he was about to work. He was helping those stupid mortals, but they were _Natasha's_ stupid mortals, her family, those she held dear despite her training to limit emotional attachments. But she had heart, she did love deeply. He saw proof of it every time he begged her to leave Yelena.

Marking each candle's wick with his blood immediately changed the energy in the room. He traced the runes on the sides of each candle, painting them with an eagle feather quill. Some aspects of magic simply worked better the old fashioned way, possibly because it infused more of his intent into the spells.

 _Locate. Present timeline. Natasha, Yelena, the Winter Soldier. All three would be together, would be hunting for new compatriots. Locate._ Locate.

Each candle began to smoke, and it slowly began to circle the open area as if there was wind to direct it. Loki breathed in the smoke, the scent of blood and fire and longing.

Natasha's mother had died in a fire, she had said. She had burned down the Red Room in order to escape it. She had helped to burn down the final site in Japan. Fire cleansed and purified, could release trapped energies, though she had no comprehension of how to tap into them. _Natasha, where are you?_ he thought desperately, still breathing in the scent of blood and fire. "Locate Natasha Romanoff," he said in a firm tone.

The smoke continued to swirl. It was lazy, confused. Loki had to tamp down on his rage, the feeling that he was missing something, that he was incompetent, he was a failure, of course she wouldn't want to come back to him. What was there for her but pain and loss? She had done nothing but lose pieces of herself over the years, giving herself away by inches until by now there had to be almost nothing left.

 _Oh._ That was it. The name he knew her by at this time wasn't the name she had as a child, wouldn't be the name she would be responding to now.

"Locate Natalia Alianovna Romanova."

Now the smoke seemed to move with purpose, shooting around the room in a directed manner, as if sketching out a map around him. It started to settle, and he could feel the essence of her _spá_ if he reached through the magic to try to touch her. He didn't; if she could still feel magic along her skin, it might startle her and alert Yelena that he was coming for her.

"Locate Yelena Belova."

The smoke didn't shift. So they were still together.

"Locate the Winter Soldier."

Again, the smoke didn't shift in the slightest. The trio were still together, their energies linked, still locked on this mission to take out Black Spectre or recruit agents to their cause. They were still going to try to rebuild the Red Room.

Natasha wanted to recruit Yelena rather than kill her. She wanted so hard to save them, and Loki didn't think she could see how much of herself was being lost in the process. He could feel it in their encounters, in the way her _spá_ had shifted. His magic didn't seem to work on her the same way anymore, either.

Loki dissipated the magic angrily. He bared his teeth to the empty room and shouted, roaring with his rage and despair.

He _needed_ her, needed her to be strong. She was his anchor, the one that helped direct him toward this redemption that Odin seemed to value so much. She knew how to make it work, and Loki didn't have that sense for himself. He went through the motions with Sam, still, and the members of the group seemed comfortable enough with Loki now. They were all standoffish, but that seemed to be the nature of their trauma.

His emotions rose high enough to choke him. Sending it out of him in a green wave of anger and ugliness, he was again glad of the empty space. There was nothing to break here, nothing to have to explain to others.

They were in Texas, in that area Tony had projected on the map. He could narrow it down further once he saw the map, but that was where they were. As tempting as it was to open a portal to their location and steal her away, he was going to do this the right way. Her way. Loki could give her that much, though it pained him to do so.

Maybe this could prove to her that he was worthy of her regard. Maybe this could show her that he was better for her than Yelena and the Winter Soldier. He needed her, but he wasn't interested in changing her or breaking her. That had to count for something.

Time to track her down.

***  
***


	3. Road to Ruin

The Black Spectre lab was located almost an hour outside of Austin, in a mostly underground bunker that appeared to be an ordinary office building. Black Spectre was very good at hiding in plain sight, and this location seemed no different. "If we destabilize their center, we can take on a number of their girls for ourselves," Yelena insisted.

Natasha felt a wariness creep into her spine, that sense of impending doom. She pushed it down and out of her immediate consciousness; that dread would only slow her down and compromise the mission. She had to be the best, especially if she had to cover for an unstable Yelena.

Going into the office building meant they needed clothing that appeared appropriate, yet could hide a number of weapons. James refused to even consider that ruse, choosing instead to be their distraction. He planned to shoot or firebomb the upper levels of the office building, triggering the alarms and deflecting attention from the lower levels, where the two women would be. "Yours is a priority mission, mine is the distraction from the actual work," he said, voice even. He knew very well what the chances were that he would be injured. "If they're truly civilians, they will duck down out of the way when I open cover fire."

"And if they're not?" Natasha asked, touching his arm in concern.

"Your life has always been more important than mine," he answered gently. "Yours is the life that must go on. I am a soldier, a weapon to be used when subtlety is not the tool needed." He covered her hand with his. "I have always understood this. I have always done the things that needed to be done, even if they are not savory."

Yelena merely rolled her eyes at the byplay. "We've covered this repeatedly," she complained.

"It's only the three of us right now, Yelena!" Natasha snapped. "You can't be so cavalier about losing one third of our people. You can't seriously want to throw away an asset."

She pouted and turned away. "He's an asset. But other assets can be made or repurposed."

"From what?"

There was no good answer for that. It was largely the reason why they were trying to pilfer agents from Black Spectre as they destroyed it.

Arriving at the office building, Yelena and Natasha breezed in easily. Security was light, as if this was an ordinary office park. No one questioned their appearance; apparently temps and assorted assistance staff rotated frequently in some of the office suites. They went straight to the back of the building, where the service entrances and elevators were. Security was tighter there at the loading dock, and their surveillance from earlier that morning had even caught sight of matte black weaponry. They were definitely in the right place.

Tactical gear had been tightly folded into their shoulder bags, and Yelena and Natasha changed quickly in one of the bathrooms. The shoes couldn't be helped, but the heels at least were chunky and not spiked. Natasha and Yelena had both been trained to run in dress shoes as well as boots, so this wasn't as grave a concern as the lack of tactical suits would have been. They weren't made of Kevlar, but the weave was tight and could prevent knife wounds from landing against skin directly the way the dress clothes would have.

As James walked into the front of the building with machine guns, the two women entered the service elevators and climbed up onto the top of each elevator car. The plan was to descend the shaft, bypassing any potential security codes that using the elevators would have required. It would make their arrival within Black Spectre barracks unannounced and more likely to succeed with fewer of the women attacking them.

That part went exactly to plan. The elevator shaft connected to various vents, and a fair number of them easily fit Yelena and Natasha. That allowed them to peer into the complex and get their bearings. "This part would have been easier if we had a trainee that was converted to our cause," Natasha grumbled in Yelena's direction. The blonde ignored it and pressed forward.

There were few women in the barracks, and it was pathetically easy to subdue them. Natasha had the sneaking suspicion that they had been wiped clean, blank slates not imprinted yet. Yelena had no compunctions about knocking them out and tying them up, intending to come back for them later. She even laughed at Natasha's concern for their state of mind. "It'll be that much easier for us to win them to our cause," she said, sounding far too much like Starkovsky for Natasha's liking.

Explosions above the complex rocked the building. That drove a number of men out of offices, some women out of labs. Natasha didn't like the implications of this, but Yelena dove right in and started literally cutting a swath through the offices. "We need intel!" Natasha tried to remind her, but Yelena ignored her. Natasha tried to grab whatever she could find on desks, even securing a laptop and attache case full of printed files. There was no time to stop and peruse its worth, or search for more. She hated not knowing if she was saving something valuable, or guarding the dross of their organization. Still, it couldn't be helped. Yelena was heading further into the lab areas. The expression on her face was almost frightening to behold.

This place reminded Natasha of the Red Room. That sent a crawling sensation down her spine, a shiver she refused to acknowledge as fear. She was in control of her mind, at least. What would these memories do to Yelena or James?

Natasha could hear the distant sound of screaming down the hall. Yelena had already messily killed every scientist she saw, heedless of the data loss and thick sprays of blood that she left behind. She was on a mission, she didn't have time to think of such things. Natasha remembered that Yelena had such issues on her Red Room missions. It was part of the reason why her scores could never surpass Natasha's. Someone always had to go behind her to clean up the mess. It hadn't been James – she never warranted attention from the Asset in that manner and had been deemed not worth the time to train with him – but someone else from Department X. It had possibly been done on purpose once they realized what Yelna would do on missions. So Yelena would paint the walls red with blood, and the Department X agent would root through the disarray to get the valuable data.

Natasha didn't like playing Department X at all. She never had.

There was screaming up ahead, not in Yelena's voice. A girl getting processed, perhaps. This was bad news, and exactly the thing they were trying to stop. Leaving the next set of labs alone, Natasha took off in a run to get to Yelena. A handler continuing with his dread work despite a breach in progress likely meant that one of the Black Spectre ladies was in the process of being programmed to defend them.

Yelena went in ahead and the door slammed shut behind her. The sound of the lock slamming into place was ominous. 

By the time Natasha hacked the door open, Yelena was standing in the center of the room, electrodes at her temples, eyes glazed and gun pointed at the floor. A dusky-skinned brunette lay on the floor, her body riddled with bullets. She was lying between Yelena and a middle aged man in a white lab coat and thick glasses. The black hair was graying, and he had his hands at controls in front of him. Natasha shot the grinning scientist in the center of his forehead and pulled Yelena out of the room.

"We need SHIELD now," she hissed to James, who had reached her not too long after. "Their therapists can undo this. I can't even begin to try to figure it out."

SHIELD must have been a trigger word, though there was no way of telling which organization put it there. Her hand snaked out to grasp Natasha by the throat. "No. _No one goes into my mind._ I won't have strangers in there!"

Natasha didn't fight her. "I don't know what they've done, Lena. That's not my field of expertise."

"No one goes into my mind! Promise me!"

"Never without your consent, Lena," Natasha promised. "But if this gets worse, we'll need help to fix it. Can you promise me that?"

Yelena finally realized her hand was around Natasha's throat, and yanked it back, horrified. She saw James with his gun out of its holster, no doubt ready to put a bullet in her temple. Stepping back abruptly, she nodded. "All right. God, Natalia, I would never hurt you, never." She looked from Natasha to James. "You believe me, don't you? Don't you?" Her voice took on a high, panicked tone. "I love you, I'd never hurt you. If I do—"

"Then you get help. You stop resisting me, and let me get you the help to get the triggers out of your head. They're ruining our plans." Natasha pressed her lips together. "I'd rather if we did this now, before we find out the hard way what those bastards were putting in your head."

She shook her head, eyes wide and desperate. "We used them, Natalia. We played them for fools, we ran them on a chase around the globe, we _stole you._ They won't want to help us, they won't want to fix me. They'll lock me away, throw away the key. They would never help the likes of me, not with what I've done."

"They took me in," Natasha pointed out.

Yelena shook her head and looked over at James. "They won't take us. Our crimes are worse than yours. The death toll... No, they won't fix me, you can't be that naïve to think that they will." Her laughter was high pitched and shrill. "They'll kill me if they don't lock me up. I can't live that way again, Natalia, I can't, I can't."

Natasha pulled her into a tight embrace and then pulled in James as well. The three huddled together, and she pressed a kiss to Yelena's temple. "I'll protect you, Lena. You know I will. It's what we do for each other. You have to trust me that I can fix this. I can't lose you."

"But what if you have to?"

Thinking of Hel's words, Natasha nearly shook. _"I will fix this,"_ she promised. She held onto Yelena tight enough to bruise, her eyes shut tight. James' hand fell onto her shoulder in silent support.

She would be asked to choose, and either choice would kill her.

***

Sam looked over at Steve's clenched jaw and shut off the news. Deadly gunfire at an office building outside Austin was bad enough, but the appearance of the Winter Soldier stalking through the smoke-filled halls, automatic weapons in hand and poised to shoot, made it even worse. "Man, I'm _fine._ You don't need to be babysitting me in the hospital when they clearly need you there."

"If I hadn't brought you in on it..."

"Do _not_ blame yourself for this," Sam snapped, finally getting angry. "Steve, I asked to go to Austria. I asked to help out in Japan. Natasha is my friend, too, and I have every right to be there, helping out however I can. You know she's in trouble. She's in over her head with that one, and the blonde is fucking crazy. Not pretty, but it's true. I saw it myself, the woman looked like nobody was even home."

"All the more reason to protect you—"

"Listen to yourself, Steve! I'm a grown adult and can make my own stupid ass decisions. If he wanted me dead, we wouldn't be arguing over this. The Winter Soldier wanted me out of the way, not dead. So instead of beating yourself up for something you didn't even do, _think_ about why that might be. You know our girl must have told him not to kill us."

"You're the one that said he might not be the kind we save."

"Yeah. And I'm qualifying that right now. We didn't know it before, but I got a chance to see him up close and personal. The man moves like a machine, not a man. Not like Yelena, not like nobody's home. But it's blank, following orders and that's it. No personality, no malice. So we find out his orders, we can get around them. You might be able to dig deep and get your friend out of the mess in his head. I'm not so sure about Yelena anymore."

Steve sighed and covered his face with his hands. "Don't say we can get Bucky back just because it's what I want to hear, Sam. I know this is stupid, Hydra wiped out all traces of Bucky, but I can't help but think that this is my fault. If I caught him on the train. Or if I trusted my instincts and looked for him so that Hydra didn't get him..."

"You know why they say hindsight is twenty-twenty?" Sam asked, cutting him off. "It's because you know how it ends. You know what needs to be done. But when you're trudging forward, living the life in the real world... You're not going to know what comes next. You don't know what else is going on. It makes no goddamn sense in the world that he should've survived a fall like that. Like ordinary folk wouldn't survive going down into the ice the way you did. Steve, you can't blame yourself for what happened. You've been to my group sessions often enough to know that," he chided gently.

Steve sighed, nodding. "Yeah. But it's Bucky. He stuck with me when I was a little guy, and when I lost all my family, he _was_ my family. I can't give up on him, can't just let him go and say he's lost now."

"Nobody said you had to," Sam pointed out. "They're just saying don't get your hopes up, in case they really did erase everything. But no matter what Hydra did to him, he isn't evil now. Keep that in mind, if no one else will. I mean, yeah, I'm not too happy he kicked my ass and shot me in Japan. _But he didn't kill me when he could've._ Even if Natasha told him not to, if he was really evil, he would've done it anyway and lied to her. But he didn't. He knocked me down, he knocked me out, he shot me in a place that wasn't fatal but still put me out." He pointed at his casted leg with his arm that was in a sling. Shooting Steve a pointed look, he waited until the super soldier sighed.

"Sitting here and beating yourself up isn't going to make me heal faster."

"If only we still had the super soldier serum..."

"Dude, the serum isn't what makes you special. You told me that yourself."

"But it would let you heal."

"Yeah, and so would asking Loki," Sam pointed out sharply. "But nobody thought to do that, did they? Well, other than me, and he looked downright sick at the thought. Said something about a spa or whatnot. I think after what happened in Japan, he's afraid his magic's going to fuck everything up. Which, given how into Natasha he is, I can see why he'd feel that way. Her head's probably been messed with, and the last thing he'd want to do is add to that."

Steve waited until Sam wound down. "So... How long have you been rehearsing all that in your head?" he asked with a wry smile.

"Hours. Days." Sam grinned at him. "You are miserably predictable, Steve. You're a good guy. In this situation, it's probably not going to be enough, is it? You're going to want to have some serious firepower on your side. That might be the only thing giving a soldier pause."

Drumming his fingers on Sam's bedside table, Steve looked at Sam thoughtfully. "Thor was in Fort Worth and knows about Austin. Think he'd help?"

"You know he would."

Now Steve's cheeks pinked slightly. "And there's his friend Sif in Asgard. She's a swell fighter, good with tactics."

"Swell, huh?" Sam asked in a sly tone. He laughed at Steve's sideways glance, finding it hilarious that he wasn't sure what he should or shouldn't say.

"We just flirted," Steve said with a sigh. "Never got a chance to be more than that on Asgard."

"So? Invite the girl over, talk tactics and how to take down a man with a metal arm that technically doesn't even exist. Sounds romantic to me," he added in a teasing note.

Steve shot Sam a bemused glance and shook his head. "That's not romantic."

"Take her someplace fancy afterward. That'll clinch it as a date."

"That's a pretty shitty date, I think," Steve sighed.

"If she's interested, you can do the classic stuff. If she's not interested, at least you know."

"It's embarrassing," Steve sighed. "You know how Tony gets."

"Man, forget that guy. Don't worry about what he says or does. Worry about what makes you happy. You of all people deserve it."

Smiling a little wider at him, Steve nodded. "Okay."

"All right, then. Get outta here and gimme details later."

They grinned at each other, and then Steve headed out of the door to find Thor.

***

An abandoned house in east Texas wound up being the place where Natasha, Yelena and James took the dazed women they had rescued from Austin. They had indeed been scrubbed clean prior to being placed in their barracks, and it was a blessing in disguise that they only name they knew of was "the Agency." It was easy to tell them that the Agency had been compromised, and they had to prioritize the removal of agents in order to keep them safe. "The other Agency locations will have been compromised as well, and we'll need to shut them down," Yelena declared. Her eyes lingered over the blank and trusting faces of the women, and her gaze hardened. "Your fellow agents are now compromised. It is our duty to put a stop to them and to their practices out in the field. They're killing innocents, and that's not what we're about."

Natasha managed not to snort, but only just. The helpless had simply been easier to kill.

But the women had no reason not to trust Yelena. Their minds were blank, and all they knew was that the Agency ran missions, and they were only told as much as they needed to know to run the mission. They trusted in that, and Yelena was setting herself up as their department head. She looked as though she was soaking up all of the undivided, devoted attention. At this rate, she would command them in her sleep.

Natasha looked out of the attic window, not seeing the broken frame or shards of glass jutting from it. This was the highest vantage point in the house, would allow her to see as far from it as she could. A chill ran down her spine, and she _knew_ bad things were coming.

She couldn't save them both. If she was totally honest, she could probably barely even save herself. Everything had spun so far out of control long before she even tried to exert her will in this situation. She wasn't as good as she thought she was, wasn't as skilled. She had limits, she couldn't do it all.

But dammit, she was still going to _try._

"They're asleep," James announced as he headed up into the attic. She had scared badly when he had snuck up on her earlier, and she had flushed with shame.

 _Starkovsky in the doorway, eyes on her as she trained, as she and other Elites were_ en pointe, _beginning to go again through the Madame's lessons. Yelena hadn't been there that day, too many bruises and sprains. Whispers in the halls, discipline handed down without an audience, without a purpose. But there could be no discipline without purpose, not if it was based on a mission. And Starkovsky wouldn't want to break one of his dolls, especially not one of his favorite ones._

_But Natasha knew the truth. He would break a doll for the fun of it, and it wouldn't bother him at all. He had plenty of others lined up once his current doll was too broken to use._

"Eleven girls," she murmured, not taking her eyes off of the insipid view outside the broken window. She should have called them women, should have given them some kind of semblance of agency. But they were erased, just shy of broken themselves, and that left them little more than girls waiting for parents to tell them what to do.

Dear God, Yelena as a parent? Or worse yet, _Natasha?_ She couldn't do this, couldn't be a role model, couldn't show others the way. Her inability to curb Loki's temper or nature had to be proof of that.

But he _tried,_ just as she did. He was different now, and that had to count for something, right? He could love, he could _change._

And if he could, why couldn't she? Why couldn't Yelena?

James crossed the attic floor, stride heavy and full of purpose where her own had been nimble and light, more like a ghost. His metal hand fell heavy on her shoulder, his flesh and bone hand combing through the tangles in her hair. It was bright red, like freshly spilled blood, and his touch sent shivers down her spine. "We grow and change, Natalia."

Her eyes slid shut and she tried not to let her breathing change in tenor. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. It shouldn't have been this way, she could see that now.

He bent down to whisper near her ear. "We'll contain the damage. We'll keep them all safe. They won't suffer like we did. Like _she_ did, especially."

"What do you know?" she rasped.

"What they told me. What I can guess. What I've seen done to others."

 _Others._ Of course Yelena wasn't the only one that Starkovsky targeted; Natasha was surprised yet not at the same time. Twenty-eight girls in the Elites at a time, and Starkovsky had been present for _years_ before they both had graduated into the Elites. The only reason why she had gotten away with as little sexual abuse as she had was that he didn't like redheads, didn't like how cold and aloof she had held herself. If he had known her heart, if he had been able to guess...

James slid his flesh hand down the curve of her jaw, then cupped her throat loosely as he stood behind her. "I can go with you. With Yelena. We can contain her, let the other girls loose on the second site we don't go to."

Natasha let loose a choked sob. "Something will go wrong with them. The other labs won't be like Austin. They'll be full force, full complement of agents and scientists and handlers, whoever is normally there. It won't be easy."

He sighed and let his hand slide down to rest over her chest, above the rise of her breaths. It was a steadying, intimate move. "Unless we decide the other agents aren't worth saving." He halted her when her mouth opened to protest. "I know they are, Natashenko," he crooned softly, lips against the shell of her ear. "I know it as well as you do. But they are the ones making this more complicated than it has to be. It could be like how we decimated the Hand if we were willing to allow that kind of collateral damage."

If he had simply been the Winter Soldier, only the asset that Department X had wanted him to be, then those women would be dead without a second thought, the other two Black Spectre sites nothing more than smoking craters. But he was no longer their puppet, and he had a mind of his own, as blank as it was in spots.

Natasha put her hands over his flesh one at her chest. "If we did that, it would be easy, but it would make us no different from Department X. We would be the same Red Room. Or AIM. Or Hydra. Or anyone else we're trying to destroy. We have to be different. We have to be better than that, we have to be."

"I know," he murmured softly, fingers twitching restlessly against her skin.

"Yelena would kill them."

"I'm not coming to Yelena."

Now she turned to look at him, wonder and pain and hope in her eyes. "We should get her checked by SHIELD. They'll take the triggers out of her mind, they'll keep it safe for us."

"They won't let her go, Natalia. They would put her on trial. If not official, then unofficially put her on some kind of probationary period. Even if they seek to convert her to their cause, they would not trust her."

"Not right away, maybe," Natasha began. "They trust _me."_

"Do they really?"

"A number of them have become my family, James," she reminded him gently.

"But even family can hurt. Even family could change." He lifted her so that their faces were at the same level. He kissed her softly, gently. "She changes. Deteriorates. I don't know if you can save her, Natashenko."

The cutesy nickname was likely meant to be comforting, but it chilled Natasha to the bone. It was the name of a small child, an innocent. It wasn't the name of a capable agent, of an assassin that had brought the mercenary world to its knees. She was now a child, someone small and silly and not able to take in the reality of the world. She lived on dreams and hopes and idle whims, she didn't understand how everything truly worked.

James held her as she cried, sobbing with all the disappointment and pain her heart hid away. He stroked her back, rocking her gently. "I'll watch the girls in San Francisco. I'll keep them safe and save whoever I can."

"You're going to leave Yelena and I in Atlanta, then?" Natasha asked, looking up at him with vulnerable, wet eyes.

"You need time to say goodbye," he said softly. "When you come back from Atlanta, she'll be the new Starkovsky, and I can't see you staying, no matter what you feel."

Natasha wanted to deny it, but the words stuck in her throat. There wasn't any hope of bringing in Yelena if she acted this way. "And you?"

"Your friend might want SHIELD to take me in, thinking I'm who he remembers," James started to say slowly. "But I don't think they would want to. I'm too much of a risk, too much of an unknown quantity. Any organization like them would rather put me down."

She grasped his shirt tightly in her hands. "No. I'll convince them. Director Fury would listen to me. He trusts me."

"Would he still, after what we've done? Yelena wasn't the only one that killed, Natasha. You took initiative, you did enough to aid us. They won't be able to paint you a victim of our villainy and greed. They can't explain away our deeds. We're coated in blood, Natasha. The world doesn't want to see that. They can't tolerate it."

"I won't leave you. I won't leave her."

"You could. You could walk away in Atlanta. Leave us behind."

She shook her head and bit her lip, tears shimmering in her eyes. "It killed me once to walk away, I don't think I could do it again."

Something like pity lurked in his gaze. "Oh, Natasha. You really should know better than to love us, to truly love us. We never should have let it go this far."

"But we did. Time and again, we did. That's why they punished us in different ways."

"And now we punish each other, even when we try not to."

James sighed and kissed her tenderly before drawing her close. "I can only hope the blade's bite won't sting when we become each others' ruins."

***

Sif greeted Steve warmly in the Avengers tower penthouse. "Steven!" she said with a grin, grasping his hand tightly. "It is an honor and a privilege to meet with you again!"

That was heartening, and Steve ginned at her widely. He sobered after a moment. "I wish our visit was under better circumstances, I really do," he said regretfully.

Sif's playful grin dialed back a notch. "Thor explained some of the troubles you have been going through." Her lips clamped shut when she caught sight of Loki skulking about in the back of the room. "Has there been trouble from that quarter?"

Steve followed her line of sight, and shook his head. "No, actually. He's been pretty devastated lately. Natasha's caught up in serious trouble, and he can't help get her out of it." Turning back toward Sif, Steve frowned. "He's refused to do magic in a while, actually. The last thing he did was a crying spell of some kind. I think it shook him up."

Frowning deeply, Sif tore her eyes away from Loki. "He does seem unhappy. It is good that Queen Frigga plans to visit as well."

Blinking in surprise, Steve led her into Avengers Tower, into the common area near the arrival deck. "We didn't ask her to help, though."

"But she gives aid. Natasha is recognized as a high jarl, a kin to royalty. Heimdall warned us of trickery and pain, but it was believed to be merely a human matter."

"Isn't it?"

"They are known as terrorists on your world. They have kidnapped, assaulted, and coerced an Ambassador that is deemed kin to Asgard."

The color drained from Steve's face at the stark words. "They see it as a move against Asgard."

"Likely it is not so; Thor did relay the fact that these were former comrades in arms, befouled with trickery and tonics of some kind." Sif frowned deeply and grasped Steve's arm tightly. "The honor guard had to be convinced to stay at the palace, Steven. A number may not have liked her personally, but Natasha trained with them, taught them sparring skills and opened their eyes to their true duty. Taking her also insulted their honor."

"Shit," Steve breathed.

"I have explained that time works differently between our realms to explain why you have not sought our aid sooner."

"That's part of it," Steve began.

"But I also explained the sensitive nature of the deed. That Natasha has many roles here as well as that of Ambassador, and it was not clear which role led to her capture."

"Our theory is that the publicity of being Ambassador is what tipped them off about where she was and what she was doing. Before that, she was all spy."

"And in honor of that, I have not brought the entirety of the guards with me." She paused, eyes searching his face carefully. "I hope my presence does not displease you."

The flush spread across his cheeks. "No! No, don't think that, Sif. We're just worried about Tash, and I never thought it was an interdimensional incident." He grasped her hand tightly, linking his fingers through hers before he could stop and doubt himself. "I—I, uh, missed you. Couldn't come up with a plausible reason for you to visit before."

"Could I not visit of my own accord?" she asked gently.

"You'd want to?"

Her lips curled slightly, and she leaned in close, touching her forehead to his. "Perhaps neither of us are used to speaking plainly of such things."

"I've never been good at talking to ladies I really cared about. Or wanted to care about."

"And talk of such things outside of battle has not been my strong suit as a girl."

Steve gave her a dopey grin. "So we're kinda dancing around an issue that doesn't have to be an issue, aren't we?"

"It appears so."

"I never was that good a dancer."

"I can observe social niceties, but often I find them distasteful."

"Meaning what?" Steve asked.

"Meaning we should speak plainly." Keeping their hands linked, Sif brought her other hand to his shoulder. "Thor has told me of the tradition for ladies going first."

"If a fella's going to be chivalrous and respectful," Steve agreed.

"I desire to know your thoughts," Sif told him boldly. "I desire to sup with you, to see if sharing a hearth and bed would be enjoyable."

Steve's dopey grin widened further. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that. That's what I want, too. I'm just not good at saying the words."

"Then say the ones you know," Sif urged, answering his grin with one of her own.

"I like how you fight, Sif. But it's more than that. You're smart and funny, and I like how you won't take any shit."

"I think I understand the phrasing," Sif replied, eyes lighting up.

Steve laughed. "Friends say I've got a type. Strong dames that know their own mind, can knock me down and help me back up." On impulse, he leaned in close and pulled their linked hands toward him. That pulled Sif into his chest, and he kissed her. Short, nothing fancy, nothing heated or nearly as dirty as he would have wanted it to be if they were alone in his suite. "I can't promise a lot right now, you know, but I want to."

"I could not accept such promises, even if you made them," she reminded him, licking her lip with the faintest hint of uncertainty. "I am sworn to serve my king and my realm, as you are still sworn to protect yours."

"We've got a bridge. And the time now together."

"Then we'd best make it count for something."

Hands still linked, they strode into Avengers Tower together.

***

Loki, if he was going to be honest with himself, preferred to fade into the background at this juncture. He could rant and rave about not being included, but he also didn't want to see Natasha with Yelena and the Winter Soldier. Didn't want to think about Yelena winding her limbs around Natasha's body, didn't want to think about the press of the Winter Soldier into her. She loved them, there was no other explanation why she would insist on staying with them even as she had feared this outcome from the very beginning. It wasn't just friendship, it wasn't obligation, it wasn't a negotiated deal.

He thought he could understand this, as the bite of this emotion was razor sharp and stung horribly. If she felt even a fraction of this pain...

"It's unlike you to hide, Loki," came a familiar voice behind him.

Not even bothering to turn around, Loki shrugged. "Your emotion is in the first bloom of affection, Sif. I'm surprised you even sought me out."

"It hurts you," she commented, booted footsteps coming closer. "Her absence," Sif clarified when Loki remained silent. "You hide from Natasha's friends because they remind you of her, of her absence from your side."

The urge to blast her with magic full force was strong, but he ruthlessly tamped it down. It would likely get him barred from Midgard entirely, and Natasha wouldn't like it. Things like that would matter once she returned. She cared about others, about things like fairness and balance. Striking Sif for her observations certainly wouldn't be balance.

He had to think about Natasha returning. Any other outcome wouldn't be tolerated.

Sif touched his shoulder, infinite patience and kindness. Her touch _burned._

It didn't bother her that Loki twitched away and refused to look at her. "Loki," she tried again. "I only wish to help find her. Steven told me of the Winter Soldier and Yelena Belova."

"Did he?" Loki said, almost ashamed that his voice rasped painfully. "Did he say that they are all lovers? That she loves them? That they are all damaged beyond repair?"

"They are not damaged," Sif chided him. "Not beyond repair. Not if we find them."

"That's his idealism talking," Loki scoffed. "That is not truth."

"Frigga comes soon. She will lend her aid. You know of her extensive studies with the _spá._ I believe she wants to change theirs."

"The consequences of such actions would be dire," Loki said, finally turning to stare at her. "I have looked into such things. Though I would not claim as much study as Frigga has done, I am aware enough of how entangled their _spá_ has become. Little can change it."

"She can."

"For a price," Loki replied, lips curling back in disdain. He was no longer dressed in standard Asgardian wear as would befit a prince. He regularly dressed in Midgardian slacks, button down shirts or pullover shirts in soft, expensive fabrics. Sam had called him a preppy, whatever that was, and the soldiers at the support group had immediately assumed he was wealthy.

He was no such thing, not as he had been on Asgard, but at least he could look the part on Midgard. He had little else going for him at the moment.

Sif was dressed in traveling wear of a high jarl, not in her battle armor. The forest green cloak was heavy in deference to the autumn weather, and its collar was embroidered with the symbols of her House. The traveling dress was a light blue shot with silver, with outer robes of a darker blue that had red embroidered patters along the overskirt and hems of the sleeves. It was a dress befitting her station, but not one she willingly had worn before. It puzzled Loki at first, but he assumed that she was assuming the role of Ambassador herself. If she had come to Midgard with the intent of fighting or rendering military aid, she would be in her armor.

"Do all things carry a price?"

"When do they not?" Loki scoffed, a weariness settling into his bones. Sif wasn't the type to dissemble or obfuscate. That was his specialty. She wasn't here to settle old scores or try to trick him in some way. Frigga might do such a thing in the questionable name of love, but Sif would never do something so underhanded. Even her lies were straightforward and direct.

"Loki. You are in pain, and so you do not see the obvious, just as the others have not. Natasha is an Ambassador to Asgard. She was stolen away by terrorists, assaulted and abused."

He stopped pacing and stared at her incredulously, finally understanding why she had arrived on Midgard. "You're to aid these Avengers in retrieving her."

"In a manner of speaking. Midgard is now the closest military ally that Asgard has in the Nine Realms. Thanos still roams free, and he still searches for the Infinity Gems. He still seeks death and destruction."

"I am banished here," Loki reminded her bitterly.

"Because of your own actions," Sif reminded him in turn. "You sought treason against your father the King, but then fought for Asgard."

Loki pulled his lips back in a snarl, teeth bared to her. "He is not my father."

"Not of blood, perhaps," Sif replied, unperturbed. "But you were raised as a son of Odin, and he still claims you as such. He still claims love for you."

That threw him. "He dares no such thing."

Sif shrugged, unperturbed. "Odin said as much in the days prior to my arrival here. Whether you accept it or not is your choice." Loki couldn't quite breathe; Natasha had said the same thing to him many a time. Sif looked at him with such an earnest expression. "Regardless, our King bid me arrive to help in retrieving Natasha from these foul rogues. Should they kill her or alter her mind, it would not go well for her duties on Asgard. Yet asking her to step down or assigning another in the role of Ambassador would be insulting."

"He cares so much for her wellbeing," Loki sneered. "I wonder how else he could save face."

Sighing, Sif shook her head. "Are your feelings for her without ulterior motive?" There was no pleasure in her expression when he scowled, at least. "She is my friend. I would help her if I could, and I will aid the others how I can."

Whatever Loki wanted to say was cut off by the sound of running feet. He scowled in their direction, not sure what was going on but not wanting to appear stupid to Sif.

Clint burst in and didn't seem surprised by Sif's presence in the slightest. "We got another hit on our private server. Two coordinates. Meet us in the conference room, we're splitting up the team to cover both sites."

No time to ponder anything anymore.

***

Looking over her shoulder, Natasha saw that Yelena was still fast asleep. Her breathing was deep and even, and James was out to look for further munitions and supplies. He planned to hit a Hydra safe house in the area, and it would likely take him about an hour or two. Natasha worked quickly, using her phone to route another signal to the Avengers drop server. Using the Strike Team Delta code had led the Avengers to show up in Fort Worth, and apparently they had enough resources to figure out that Austin had been their next target. There were two separate locations now, and if the Avengers split forces as they had in Japan, they likely would be hurt as badly as Sam had been. Natasha still felt sick over that, especially since she had no way of knowing if he was all right.

Yelena had picked Atlanta to start with. It had a large hub airport, and the city was large enough to hide in prior to attacking the Black Spectre locations. James and the eleven Black Spectre girls would attack the San Francisco site, and she made sure to put that in her message. It would be the less dangerous site for them, if only because James operated on such a straightforward basis. Yelena was so difficult to predict.

It had taken time for Natasha to regain her composure after the attic talk with James, though Yelena had been too occupied with her new charges to notice. That had hurt badly. She had been aware enough of Natasha to realize that, to declare in front of the empty girls that Natasha was the second in command, that her word was law just as Yelena's was. Of course they believed her, looked to Natasha with perfect trust. This was all they knew, all they were trained to believe, all the truth that they had to work with.

The myriad lies weighed heavily on Natasha now, and she was sick of it. She was sick of everything she had to do in this line of work, everyone she had to be. She wanted things to be simpler, to be as straightforward as James or the Avengers were. Instead of living with lies and shadows, she wanted to be out in the open. She ached with that need. It didn't even matter to her that Yelena wouldn't understand it. The blonde had volunteered, after all. She wanted to be an Elite, she wanted to be part of the Red Room.

Natasha had been stolen. She had never been given a choice.

Yelena woke abruptly, eyes wild and confused even if the rest of her was relaxed. Those eyes softened when they took in Natasha sitting there, concern etched into her features. "Natalia, why do you keep worrying about me?"

 _Because I love you_ was on the tip of her tongue, but admitting it would be weakness. "The triggers," she said instead, which Yelena saw as a lame excuse.

"You don't understand. I'm fine," Yelena insisted, leaning forward and catching her hand tightly. She even brought Natasha's knuckles up to her lips to kiss them.

"Those girls are _broken,"_ Natasha said, staring at her intently. "They broke those girls apart and all we have are shards inside empty shells. It's going to get us killed."

Staring at her intently, Yelena's eyes seemed to shift. "You love Winter," she said finally, her voice cold and distant. Her demeanor was slightly different, though Natasha couldn't put her finger on _how,_ exactly.

"If those girls don't survive San Francisco, what's the point in saving them? In keeping them? In rebuilding the Red Room?"

Yanking hard on Natasha's hand, Yelena's expression shifted into one of frightening and startling rage. Natasha sprawled face first on the bed in front of Yelena, and didn't fight back when the blonde started to rip at her clothes, nails digging gouges into her skin. She let out a soft grunt and shut her eyes when the scratches turned to punches, but didn't say a word. There had been plenty of this as children, the supervisors pitting the girls against each other. Even Yelena, as much as she had always loved Natasha, had to hit her for Starkovsky's benefit. A delicate dance between him and Ivan had to be played out between the girls.

The violence stopped as suddenly as it started. Yelena looked down at Natasha, at the torn clothes, welts and red marks that might turn into bruises. "I'm sorry," she whispered, starting to sob. "I promised you I'd never hurt you, and look at me. Look at me!"

"I hit a trigger, didn't I?" Natasha asked in a resigned tone.

"No. I'm fine. I'm in control," Yelena insisted. Was that a waver in her voice? "I know what you're going to say, and I can't do it. _I can't._ No one is going to root around in my head anymore. Don't make me, Natasha. You won't like the things I had to do to survive. You won't like _me."_

"I love you," Natasha murmured into the blanket, the words muffled. But it didn't matter, Yelena wasn't listening anymore. She was sure that SHIELD would hurt her worse than the Red Room had, that Natasha wouldn't care for her anymore. That even the Winter Soldier wouldn't respect her if they got their hands on her.

Yelena stroked Natasha on the back of her head, soothing her. "Look. The marks are already going away, Natalia. It's going to be all right."

Natasha kept her eyes shut and her body very still. Just like the Red Room. Just like when they were children, struggling to survive.

She wasn't enough, she had to admit that to herself now. Natasha wasn't enough to save Yelena from herself, wasn't enough to bring her back from whatever fractured edge she teetered on. And she wasn't enough to keep James safe, was she? Not when he valued himself so little thanks to the Department X programming. Everything she wanted was slipping through her fingers faster than she could hold onto it.

Whatever was left of her heart was breaking.

***  
***


	4. Ready To Let You Go

Frigga arrived at Avengers Tower with no fanfare. She didn't even use the Bifrost, but apparently traveled along her own spelled routes. The only signal to mark her arrival was the smell of burning herbs and the sound of static. In one moment, the common area was empty, in the next, she stepped through air that shimmered like water. She was regal, head to toe in sea foam green and gold, curled hair twisted into elaborate braids and coils, pins and jeweled combs holding it in place. Her jewelry was all gold and amber, long dangling chains at her neck and heavy baubles dangling from each ear. The robes swathed around her form hid the shape of her body as was proper on Asgard, but there was still no mistaking that she was every inch a Queen of formidable will, power and strength.

Tony had no cutting remarks or sarcasm, merely blinking and staring at the space Frigga stepped through, his glass of brandy not quite making it to his mouth. Pepper was in an immaculate suit of cream and light blue, an array of paper in front of her. It had been an attempt to engage him in the legalities of roaming about San Francisco and Atlanta searching for Black Spectre labs, when their SHIELD and Stark Industries contacts in either city couldn't pinpoint any signs that would suggest that agency's presence.

Steve and Sif sat next to one another, poring over maps of San Francisco. They elected to go there, along with Thor and Tony; the San Francisco contingent was larger due to how many people they would be fighting, and Steve had finally been convinced that he should try reaching out to the Winter Soldier. Maybe he would be able to pull Bucky out of him, maybe not. But he was willing to try now, as he hadn't in the wake of the hunt through Japan. Bruce was feeling downright ill about the thought of going into another city and potentially becoming the Hulk again, and opted to sit this one out.

That left Clint and Loki to hunt through Atlanta for Natasha and Yelena. Honestly, neither man had been particularly pleased on that point, but were willing to at least work together.

Frigga smiled warmly at all of the people in the room. "It is not too late, then."

"If you mean going after assassins," Tony began slowly, "then, no." He swallowed the last of his brandy and nearly scowled at the Queen.

"I speak of the _spá,_ Mr. Stark," Frigga replied evenly. Somehow, she made the correction sound like a chastisement even if there was no obvious censure in her tone. Tony looked away and plopped back down in his seat beside Pepper.

Continuing into the room, Frigga looked at them all in turn. "What are you all prepared to do? What would you be willing to lose?"

Most of the people bristled, but Loki just looked at her with a blank expression. "They don't understand the sacrifice and exchange, Frigga," he said, voice devoid of emotion. Her eyes lit on him, and he wanted to ignore the thread of hope that they could reconcile. She would always hope that, and he would always push away the desire to. He was a monster, she was the gilded Queen. Their lives never should have connected.

But it had, and he hated that he needed her so much.

"Tell them how you cannot change the threads of fate without sacrifice. Tell them how undoing what the Norns have wrought could change the fabric of time and space. Tell them how every unmaking will cause a snarl and making of another sort," Loki said, his voice rising. He didn't want to acknowledge it as hysteria. "Tell them of the untold and unforeseen consequences of such actions. Tell them how trying to fix this mistake could create a dozen others, could harm or even kill those you would seek to protect."

Frigga looked at Loki evenly. "If I do a working, I am always willing to assume the cost of the sacrifice. I would not ask it of anyone else here."

He didn't rise to her even tones as he would have even a year ago. "They would, if you asked them to. I know they would."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "As difficult as our conversations had been on Asgard, I see that you are truly changed, Loki." She reached out to him, but didn't quite touch his cheek. As much as he longed to shift his head to allow contact, he didn't. "I would not ask any of you to bear the cost of any working I do. I suppose it is what Natasha is due, at the very least. She did say many a painful truth, which I had not been prepared to hear. But after revealing yourself in the throne room, after being willing to bear the punishment meted out..." Frigga gave Loki a watery smile and closed the gap to touch Loki's face. "I see she was right."

"About how monstrous I truly am? About your role in it?" he asked, no inflection in his tone. It was a definite change from his past interactions.

"That you needed room to grow and be yourself," Frigga corrected.

He huffed, but otherwise remained silent. She gave him a slight nod, then turned toward Clint and created an ornate chair in front of him. "You are the closest to Natasha." At his nod, she drew several parchment-wrapped packages out of her sleeves and sat down in front of him with a fond smile on her face. "Then I need to find that thread between the two of you. Once I find it, I can trace it back to her, then start to reshape it."

Clint eyed the parchment packages warily. "Um..."

"These are sacred herbs often used in magic, Clint. It will heighten your memories and the ties that you have with Natasha."

Loki was disconcerted when the archer actually looked to him for confirmation. Did he actually trust Loki with this?

But then, this also made sense. Loki loved Natasha, would not do anything to harm her. Anyone else might have been fair game, but not her. Frigga might not have had the same motivation to save Natasha from the Red Room.

"I won't bore you with the lore," Loki drawled, lips curling into an infuriating smile. Clint rolled his eyes, but looked back at Frigga. "There are one or two hallucinogens in there. I do hope you enjoy that kind of thing."

Now Clint looked back at the herbs with a frown. "Um, no." Loki assumed he was thinking of the time he had been possessed. "That's actually pretty awful."

"Damn," Tony snarked. "Why don't _I_ get the parts of jobs that require getting high?"

Pepper pinched his arm. "Because you're supposed to be getting on the wagon, Tony. You drunk is bad enough, I don't want to see you high." She ignored his pout as she usually could, and looked expectantly at Frigga. "Can you explain what the rest of us would see?"

"A lot of nothing," Frigga admitted, sitting down in the ornate chair she had conjured. "Much of magic doesn't look like very much."

"Are the rest of us going to get high?" Tony asked, sounding almost hopeful. Pepper immediately swatted his arm for that.

Bruce had apparently thought ahead and brought his equipment to track magical devices, and now turned them on. When Frigga looked at him quizzically, he shrugged. "I thought Loki would want to do tracking spells, so I was planning to recalibrate the signatures we have on file. That way it should be easier to find the hiding places in San Francisco and Atlanta. They're fairly large cities to have to search through, and we don't have a starting point."

"Magic is shaping the will and reality, forcing the two to connect and become the same," Frigga began, unwrapping some of the parchment packages. "But for those with little aptitude, these herbs can enhance the receptive ability. I need you to drink the tea brewed from these herbs, and think on your friendship with Natasha," she told Clint. Before he could even ask what she meant by tea, she brought out a canister from her sleeve that looked like a small thermos. Frigga poured the herbs into the canister in a precise order, then she capped it again and shook it vigorously. After about a minute of that, she handed it to Clint. "Drink this."

As much as he eyed it warily, he took the offered canister and drank it in three large gulps. He coughed a bit and made a face, the taste of the herbs extremely bitter and almost antiseptic tasting. Clint looked at Frigga expectantly. "Okay, then. Let's do this."

It really didn't look like anything. Clint had furrowed brows as if concentrating, and Frigga simply looked at him intently. Loki's eyes danced between the two of them; he could see something of the magic that was being performed, golden threads hovering above Clint's head that Frigga was reading. Bruce was disappointed, his machines picking up nothing of this kind of working. Then again, Frigga wasn't reweaving anything yet.

And then there it was, Natasha's thread. Loki's breath caught in his throat as he took in the sight of it, so much clearer with Frigga's skill than his poor attempts to grasp it. Her thread was knotted and frayed, woven in strange shapes throughout her years, other pieces woven into it and out of it, sometimes thinner, sometimes thicker, sometimes multiple patterns at once, sometimes a single cohesive pattern. Loki wanted to reach out and touch it, feel the ridges and bumps and shapes that made up Natasha's lifetime thus far. He wasn't sure if this would be the only way that he could see her again.

The current portion of her thread had unraveled in spots, which was concerning, frayed thin and almost sickly looking. He raised his eyes from the length of thread between Frigga's splayed fingers to see her looking at him in compassion.

He shivered at that look in her eyes. "What is it?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper instead of the shout he'd wanted to make.

 

"So many influences and changes during her lifetime. I never knew, never was aware. It was possibly for the best that she was chosen as Ambassador, then. She did know of what she spoke about, even if we did not wish to hear it."

"Yes, yes, that I know," Loki said impatiently. Hadn't she done the same for him? Forced him to see all he didn't want to? Forced him to take on a fucking ledger as she had, to see things as a balance and as a formula to redemption?

"But she herself is unraveling," Frigga continued softly. She flicked her fingers wider, and the image of Natasha's thread grew larger, much like the image on a touch screen that these mortal companions of hers used. "You see it, don't you? Now that I show it to you..."

Loki's mouth opened, but it shut immediately when he looked at Natasha's thread again. There was her own center thread, slender, with fraying pieces coming off of it at intervals, each piece ragged and forlorn. There was an off white thread knotted onto hers, as if choking off the central piece of it, a silvery thread wrapping around it, and a light green thread that had been knotted onto her thread some time back that had fallen away from her central thread. The knot even looked like it was coming loose, as if everything was going to unravel.

He knew who all the threads were immediately.

"She broke off pieces of herself to fix us," Loki said quietly, lips trembling. Shame filled him, but he forced himself to look back at Frigga's compassionate expression. "They're leading her to her ruin. She must know that, but she's letting them."

Wondering why no one else was commenting, Loki looked around the room. They were all frozen in time. Tony and Pepper had a StarkPad between them, Stark Industries data on it; she apparently had been trying to get his input into some project from the R&D department. Steve was looking at Clint in concern, a hand resting on Sif's wrist. Sif seemed content to look at Steve. Thor was looking at his mother. Bruce was looking at his equipment. Clint was frozen in concentration, focusing on his memories of Natasha.

Knowledge buzzed in the back of Loki's mind. Frigga had frozen them all as she enlarged the image of Natasha's _spá_ for him to view. The only reason would be for his benefit, so they could speak plainly and not worry about secrets of magic and Asgard being bandied about so freely in front of the mortals.

"What decision do you need me to make?" Loki asked quietly.

Frigga's expression softened slightly. "I consulted with Lady Hel and her seers before coming here," Frigga murmured, looking at the thread again. "Because my own casting was unclear, because the ladies at court that dabble could not even touch Natasha's lifetime. I can only see this for myself because of the ties Natasha has with her friends, the anchors in the web she created in this life."

"You're not angry with her anymore, are you?" Loki asked, wondering when Frigga would circle around and get to the point.

"No, Loki. I discovered a great many things I did not wish to know. Hel thought I should, in order to understand the magnitude of the sacrifices Natasha's people expected her to make. To understand what she did with you."

A flick of the fingers, and then the beginning of Natasha's lifetime came into view. An ordinary thread initially, then the red snarls of pain, anger, grief, rage, and desperation came into view. The off white thread that had to be Yelena was a balm of sorts, weaving in and out of hers, knotting it stronger in places, then fading away. The ragged patterns here were odd shaped and laced with cruelty, building layers upon layers over Natasha's slender thread. The weavings were crude in places, in and out of others, and Loki understood these to be the personality overlays of the Red Room that everyone alluded to. _She wasn't herself. She became other people,_ Clint had said when Loki questioned him about it. _Look, I'm not qualified to talk about this, definitely not cleared for it. But they fucked with her head, and God only knows what it did to her, and SHIELD did what they could to get it all out._

Except that they hadn't.

"Her life faded in and out, changed, was reworked, subsumed and altered in ways I cannot and do not want to imagine," Frigga murmured. "She knew what she spoke of, when she told me that we did you no favors. We thought we were. But what we thought we were doing is of no matter in the end, is it?"

Loki stood and approached her, Natasha's broken and frayed lifeline between them. "I think I am starting to understand that intentions do matter."

Frigga's lips twisted into a slight smile. "And what would it take to repair us, Loki? I would fix this damage for her own sake, not for you."

"But I would thank you for it. She is precious to me." _I love her,_ he couldn't quite say out loud to her. She knew it, though.

"Yes, she is precious indeed. And to save her, to preserve _her,"_ Frigga murmured, regret thick in her tone, "I will need to take on another's vitality."

"Take a life to feed hers," Loki echoed.

"Hel told me she will not choose the sacrifice. Not that she understood it that way, but she would not choose who to save."

"She still thinks she can bring them both in, doesn't she?"

"Natasha at least _says_ that she will."

Loki sighed. "She is inherently stubborn that way. She has likely convinced herself of it, even if on some level she doesn't." He looked back at the thread between Frigga's fingers. "She would hate me if I chose for her."

"Perhaps."

"But she would be alive to hate me."

Her lips warbled in response. "I understand that sentiment very well."

Looking at her closely, Loki finally sighed. "Yes, I suppose you do."

"Your choice?"

Steve would miss the Winter Soldier, sure his friend was buried in there somewhere. Loki wasn't sure; he had seen the hollow gaze and knew it for what it was. But Natasha had recovered, leaving Steve with hope. Steve had been fair, and Loki actually did not want to hurt him.

Yelena, on the other hand, had destroyed all the supports that might have missed her other than Natasha. No one would miss her. And she was volatile, unstable, violent and the greatest threat to Loki's relationship with Natasha.

"Yelena," Loki murmured, shame flooding through him. It was utterly selfish, really. Oh, he could come up with perfectly logical reasons, perhaps, but Frigga didn't need them. She simply nodded, and pulled apart the threads of fate so that she could see the entire web.

Loki's chest hurt looking at it. There she was, his damaged and fractured Natasha, all the facets she had never wanted him to see. He could only see it in the abstract, in the language of magic, but she would never be happy with the fact that he had seen it.

And he had added to the snarls and tangles in her web, added to the pain and misery that she had contained in her lifetime.

The guilt burned, rather like Hel's potion did once upon a time. That fucking ledger...

"It won't be pretty," Frigga murmured, and Loki could hear the rasp of others breathing again. Her eyes and focus was on the tangled threads in front of her, and Loki wondered if this was her way to sidestep further conversation. Or confrontation.

"I understand," Loki replied quietly.

"And it won't be immediate," Frigga added.

"Of course not. Altering the _spá_ is not undertaken lightly." Loki turned away from her, and caught Steve and Sif sitting next to each other. Mortal and Asgardian. That wouldn't end well; even with Steve's enhancements, he would eventually grow old and die long before Sif, and there would only be pain and loss. Even if Loki helped to get Natasha back, he would feel the same thing soon enough. Too soon, not long enough.

Everything hurt. Everything _hurt,_ and he wanted to scream.

Bruce's eyes were on his equipment, and he was forwarding the data to Stark's servers and to Jane, who was spending some time with Selvig at his lab. Loki hadn't paid attention to her mathematical prattle or why it would be important to humans. Steve and Sif had been interested, Thor as well. But Thor was _supposed_ to be interested in what Jane had to say. He liked her, maybe even loved her. Of course he would think everything she said was brilliant, that she could do no wrong. True, she actually _was_ brilliant, and she had a force of will to be reckoned with, but he was enamored with her the way that Loki was with Natasha. Did he feel this way when they were separated? Did his chest feel as though it was nothing more than a gaping, sucking chest wound? Was that why it hadn't been more surprising when Loki had stabbed him? He had already hurt, what was one more little wound?

"What are these consequences you warned about?" Steve asked after a moment. Clint nodded, as if he had also wanted to ask but hadn't wanted to disturb Frigga's concentration.

"Life begets life, but sometimes life also consumes life," Frigga answered, fingers splayed wide in front of her. Her gaze was distant, focused on the threads in the web in front of her. "We have debts, alliances, pledges. All these must come due, must be rewoven carefully back into the web in order for it to remain steady. Otherwise, it will collapse."

It was disturbing how all eyes swung to Loki, as if they needed him to confirm what she was saying about life and magic. How had he become their expert? How had they come to trust him, after all that had transpired?

Though one thing was clear to everyone in the room. If this had nothing to do with Natasha, he would have left them to burn in their own mistakes.

"None in this room are going to pay the price of it," Loki said quietly. That was hardly reassuring to the others, but it wasn't meant to be.

"There are debts to repay, and some can never be repaid. It doesn't mean we can't try," Frigga murmured gently.

"Natasha says that all the time," Clint said suddenly, looking up at Frigga with a frown.

Frigga's smile was sad. "What she says is truth, even if it was one we didn't want at the time."

"Meaning?" Clint prompted.

"She won't be the same. There is damage that can't be fixed this way. But you can locate her now. You can find her." Her eyes flicked toward Loki for the barest of moments, and before he could even open his mouth to ask her why, _knowledge_ shot through him.

She had reformed the magic bond that Loki had created and Yelena had severed.

"If she's not the same..." Clint began in concern.

"She will be Natasha. She will be the woman you all know. But there are some things I just can't fix this way. Magic does not solve all, though I try," Frigga said softly.

The shape of the web was different now, subtly so. Loki could feel her, a warmth behind his breastbone. It comforted him, even if he couldn't see her. He could tell she was unhappy, but she was unharmed, at least. Yelena wasn't hurting her. The Winter Soldier wasn't hurting her, though Loki thought perhaps he never would. He was built to protect the others. Yelena, on the other hand, wasn't conforming to old programming.

Frigga's explanation didn't quite cut it for the others, but there was nothing they could do about it. Thor escorted her around the common areas and then into his suite for a visit, and Loki knew that he would eventually bring her to visit Jane and Selvig. Steve and Sif would spend time together before looking to take down the Red Room.

That would leave Loki to explain Frigga's cryptic remarks, though he had no intention of telling them the truth. Steve might ask about the Winter Soldier, and it would be easier to steer the conversation there. His tangled thread changed shape and color and directions so many times, it was impossible to say who or what he was at the moment. Loki could avoid the talk of fate and futures. Taking another's future to strengthen Natasha's would horrify her as well, and especially if she knew it was Yelena's.

But Loki had seen the shape of that off white thread, and it didn't have much farther to go.

***

Natasha kept her expression impassive as the blank slates from Austin were sent to San Francisco. James was with them to secure the base and kill Black Spectre agents and handlers, but it wasn't the same. And it left her alone with Yelena.

She ignored Yelena's overtures in the airport and on the plane. Her fingers brushed gently against Natasha's arm as she moved to another seat, and Natasha nearly twitched away from her touch with an expression of distaste on her face. Yelena could see that something was off, but didn't want to break her cover to ask about it, which Natasha had been counting on. She grabbed her overhead bag and moved off the plane as quickly as possible, then stalked through the airport to the MARTA station. She bought a Breeze card and disappeared into the station before Yelena even showed up with her luggage.

There was no avoiding Yelena at the hotel, but at least Natasha had a quiet ride on the subway to help soothe her jangled nerves. She could always walk away at this point, find the Avengers and defect back. Or rather, return to them, given that she wasn't really aligned with the Red Room. It was a tangled mess, and she didn't want to play this game anymore. Natasha could always get off the MARTA early, circle back on the Red line and head back to the airport. Or keep going into a different part of Atlanta. Instead of staying downtown, she could head up into Buckhead, stay at the Mayfair and hide until it all blew over. She didn't have to go to the Underground to find where Black Spectre hid their labs. She could walk away.

But she got off at the prearranged station and went to the hotel to check in and wait for Yelena as planned. She could walk away, but Yelena could go off the deep end. If she destroyed the city, Natasha would feel the loss of every life as if she had taken a knife to their throats herself. It was busy, but in a different way than New York. More spread out, less populous, a little friendlier than New York. She was even approached by a friendly homeless man who insisted on accompanying her from the station to her hotel ten blocks away. He chatted amiably about the city's history, that she was smart to use a map and not a GPS "because there are about thirty Peachtree Streets, and you'll never find the right one on a GPS!" and some of his favorite diners to visit. He was fairly clean and well nourished, and admitted to accompanying tourists to keep them safe, and asking for a handout so that he could afford the $20 per day at various shelters he went to in order to shower or eat regular meals. Natasha hadn't needed the company, but at least it kept her from thinking dark, despairing thoughts about Yelena. She gave him a $5 for his trouble, making him light up and thank her.

At least someone appreciated her efforts to do the right thing.

No, that wasn't quite fair, either. It was just a small drop in the ocean that was her ledger, that was all. She couldn't catch up, not now, not after this, and she knew her soul was irreparably stained. There was no escaping the Red Room, no other way than to keep drowning in blood.

Yelena eyed her as soon as she entered the room. Natasha was sitting at the window, staring out at the parts of downtown that she could see. There was an entrance to the Underground nearby, and it would be short work to find the Black Spectre labs. They certainly knew how to work with a city's geography, using the remnants of antebellum Atlanta to hide their own complex. The modern city had been built over the ruins, giving it multiple levels. What was another one, after all? Why not give it a little more secrecy?

"I've made you angry," Yelena said, voice soft. "I've ignored you and focused on the other girls, leaving you alone."

"You do what you have to do," Natasha replied noncommittally.

"Do you think I love those girls? Do you think I'm going to leave you for them?"

"I think you'll do whatever needs to be done."

Kneeling in front of Natasha, Yelena peered at her impassive face. "I've neglected you. And I know that the Winter Soldier is not enough. He's a fragment of a man, a machine Department X built, too cold for your fires."

Natasha sighed, intending to say something. But Yelena leaned in, rising up to kiss her mouth and cradle her jaw. "It's why I sent them away," she murmured against Natasha's mouth. "It's just us here. Just us, like the old days in the corners, and we can be alone."

She wanted to believe it, but Natasha couldn't. Yelena was too unstable, and whatever the techs at Austin had done seemed to make her mind unspool further. But she didn't resist Yelena's kiss, letting her undress her. She laid back on the bed, limbs splayed, leaning into Yelena's touch. Her eyes slid shut, and she blotted out everything but the reverent feel of Yelena's mouth and fingers and tongue, sliding over her body. Yelena knew how to work her body expertly, knew all her sensitive places and the crevices that would have her screaming in ecstasy. This she did, over and over, until Natasha was hoarse from her gasps and cries, leaving her a shivering, quivering mass of nerve endings.

But it was also a move that left her feeling hollow. This was all they had. Yelena could pull the strings to make her body jump and come, but she didn't feel enough inside.

Yelena cradled her afterward, and the slide of skin on skin felt wonderful. Natasha wished she could focus on that, could ignore what would come after this. She wished she could trust Yelena, that she could spin time backward even a few months. If she had pushed harder for Yelena to go to SHIELD, if she hadn't let herself get caught up in killing Ekaterina Sarkissian or taking out those enemies that SHIELD couldn't touch...

"I love you," Yelena murmured, nibbling on her earlobe and caressing her breast. "After this, we will be completely free."

It didn't feel the same. Those words should have brought joy to Natasha's heart. Now, they only rattled around inside her chest, a reminder of all the things that could have been but now would never be.

At least Yelena didn't need a reply. She was too absorbed in her kisses and caresses, too caught up in touching Natasha.

This wasn't her Yelena. It was, but it wasn't at the same time. Natasha couldn't get over the eerie sense that the girl she knew had disappeared somewhere along the lines in the past few months, subsumed by the mission she gave herself. There was something she was missing, there had to be, something obvious she was overlooking. She had done it before, spectacularly so in Loki's case, and sometimes to a lesser extent before and after. It had to be that she was too close to this, too entangled and not objective enough.

Natasha gave herself over to Yelena's touch again. She didn't know how to fix this situation, didn't know how to save them all. She would still try, she couldn't help but try, no matter what Yelena planned, but she wasn't as confident about succeeding anymore.

This felt more like a goodbye than a renewal of purpose.

So Natasha turned the tables on Yelena and pushed her down to kiss her, to fuck her with lips and tongue and fingers, rutting against her until galaxies exploded behind her eyes, until Yelena was just as breathless as she had been.

"We'll start checking out the Underground tonight," Natasha said quietly.

"It'll look like we're checking out the club scene," Yelena agreed sweetly, pulling Natasha in for a kiss. The tastes of their sex mingled on their tongues, and Yelena broke away first. "We'll find them, demolish them, free the girls they stole."

"And then you'll steal them if you can."

"I'll be kinder. Gentler. They'll be family, and we won't be alone." Her smile turned eerie and predatory. "You can have one to play with, if you like. If you think I'm not enough for you, if Winter can't handle your appetite for a man to fuck."

"Don't be absurd," Natasha snapped, sitting up and moving to leave the bed.

Yelena yanked her back. "Am I being absurd? Really?" She pushed Natasha down onto her back and straddled her naked body. Holding her hands pinned to the bed, Yelena grinned down at Natasha's prone form. Her smile was an edged thing, reminding Natasha of Loki's feral grins before they struck their deal. "Or do you wish your archer was here to fuck you? Do you want those ridiculous men fucking you until you can't walk, until you're drowning in their come like a greedy slut? Is that what you want? Do you want to be their whore?"

Natasha bucked up suddenly, disturbing Yelena's balance. She shoved the blonde off of her viciously, lips drawn back in a snarl. _"Never speak to me that way again,"_ she snarled in anger. "You're talking about my family, Yelena. We've never slept together and never will." She caught Yelena's hand when it would have arced across the space between them to slap her, and she actually growled. "I've _never_ accepted you belittling me that way, and I will never want you slut shaming me or calling me a whore. I don't even accept that idiocy from creatures calling themselves gods."

Something shifted in Yelena's eyes and she collapsed against Natasha. "I don't want you to leave me, Natalia. What would I do without you? No one compares to you. The years with Ophelia only showed me I can't accept anything less than you."

Good god, what a mess the two of them were.

"I'm done after this," Natasha warned her. "No more running, no more hunting, no more killing. I can't do that anymore, not even for you."

The betrayal in her eyes was painful to see. "Natalia..."

"I mean it, Yelena. I draw the line after this. I can't do this for you anymore. I'm done with the death. I'm done with the way you keep lying to me and to yourself. You're not in control, and you promised me you'd let me get those triggers fixed."

"I'm in control," Yelena hissed in correction. Her hands grasped Natasha and pulled her close, skin to skin. "I showed you how much control I have," she purred. "I know how to make your body sing and your heart stop. I know so many things, I have only begun to show you what I can do, Natalia."

She just felt tired and worn out. "And then when you've shown me? When I'm not what you want me to be? What then? What happens next?"

Yelena frowned at her. "We are the Red Room. The world will tremble at the sound of our name, they will know we are the forces to be reckoned with. We will be the ones feared."

"But _why?"_ Natasha insisted. "Why rebuild the Red Room? What next? If these are the last enemies to get rid of... What are you going to do next?"

"We work for ourselves, of course."

"To what end?" Natasha pressed. Now she pushed Yelena back, putting some distance between their bodies. "Before, the missions ultimately furthered the causes that our handlers supported, and we took out enemies of the Russian state. What will our missions be for now? What does working for ourselves mean?"

It was clear that Yelena hadn't thought that far ahead. "It doesn't matter," she said finally. "It won't matter who we hire ourselves to. Ours is a skill set that many will pay for. We're the best and brightest, and ours is the example to set."

Natasha scrubbed at her face. "So there is no higher goal, no purpose other than to continue amassing a reputation."

"What else is there?" Yelena asked negligently, shrugging. "That's the only thing worth having, you know. Why else try so hard, but to be the best?"

Because that was her constant struggle in the Red Room. Yelena constantly felt second best to Natasha, constantly wanted to prove herself. Even giving over herself hadn't assuaged that need, still buried down deep inside of her psyche. Starkovsky probably felt no need to get rid of that, as it would play into his need to dominate and control the girls, to dangle favors or praise over their heads. How else to compel Yelena to submit to his desires but to taunt her with statements that she wasn't as good as Natasha?

"We were taken and our minds were played with. These women were abducted and wiped clean without their consent. We can protect women like that. We can prevent it from happening to anyone else. It's not enough to simply decimate Black Spectre. We need to destroy Jerome Beecham so he never does this ever again."

"He operates out of San Francisco," Yelena replied easily. "I told Winter to increase the iron in his diet with extreme prejudice."

She smiled so sweetly, so proud of herself. An answer for everything, as if all contingencies had been planned for, as if the entire universe could conform to her whims. And why not, when she once had Ophelia Sarkissian and all of their agents and mages fooled?

Wearily, Natasha turned and went to the bathroom. "I need a shower and I need to get out of here. I've been inside too long."

Yelena frowned, but didn't stop her. At least she had that much space for now.

This measure of peace likely wouldn't last for long.

***  
***


	5. Call Off Your Ghost

Natasha was tired of the groping and stares, the sticky lip gloss and the swish of hair next to her ear. She couldn't stand the idiots that swore up and down that they were hot stuff, that they could make her toes curl and scream in ecstasy. She managed not to roll her eyes and smiled inane smiles at the frat boys and tourists in the club, filling in the spaces that they expected her to fill, being the party girl they were looking for. This was a thin cover, but it didn't need to be a good one, didn't need to take on parts of her soul.

She could feel magic curling around her body; it had been so long since she had felt it that she almost didn't recognize it. Turning rapidly, she batted her eyes at the football player in front of her and asked him breathily for a drink. He hurried off, sure he would score that evening, and she used the time to scan the crowd. Loki had to be somewhere. He was the only magic user she knew that would want to track her down.

Nothing. She was almost disappointed.

Yelena was trawling through a different club, and Natasha would have to meet up with her soon enough. They were haunting two places where Black Spectre had taken their agents from, but Natasha couldn't see anyone that seemed more like an agency's recruiter. Of course, the point was that they wouldn't be recognized or seen, but she knew what recruiters looked like. She knew how to hunt down ghosts.

The trick to belonging everywhere was to belong nowhere. To appear to know everything, she had to know a little bit and intuit the rest.

She smiled at the football player when he returned with a drink and sipped it. No one seemed to be haunting the club this evening. "Hey," she purred over the pulse of music. "Know another place to hang? This doesn't seem that great right now."

"You kidding?" he scoffed. "This place is _awesome._ It's pumping real good right now."

Natasha lifted a brow. "But maybe we can find a better place."

He took it as a come on and a slow grin spread across his lips. "Oh, I get it." He knocked back the rest of his drink and the lascivious look was cloying. "Oh, yeah, we're good."

Leaving with him gave her a different view of the club. _There._ Against the wall was her likely ghost, perusing the crowd. Natasha managed to disentangle herself from the football player, claiming to need the bathroom. She went past the probable ghost on the way to the bathroom, and she could see the knife in his pocket and the outline of what was probably a vial and syringe in his pocket. It was easy to feign a drunken ankle turn, crashing into him. Palming the drugs didn't go unnoticed, but he couldn't stab her outright without generating panic. She grinned as she stumbled again, pulling him further into the dark hallway. An elbow to the groin and throat kept him from attacking, and she drew up the entire vial's contents as she struggled to breathe. Natasha smiled, a fierce and frightening thing to behold.

"Now, why don't you tell me where you came from and where you're going next?" she purred, leaning into him. Her hand closed over his knife before his did, and she twisted it in her fist, cutting into his leg. "Maybe if I like what you say, I'll even let you live." 

Terror flooded his eyes. They both knew he wouldn't live past this night. It was really only a question of how much pain he would be in first. 

He wasn't loyal enough to Black Spectre. He died quickly and relatively painlessly in the alley behind the club less than an hour later. 

***

James and the former Spectre agents arrived in San Francisco without incident. There was a flash of memory, something that vaguely felt memory. A little girl with twin braids running ahead of him, her clothes old fashioned and face turned away from him. Another girlish voice called him Bucky, and then the memory skittered away like cockroaches with the flick of a light.

The confused women all had names, though likely none of them were ones they had been born with. Sheila, Raquel, Rebecca, Veronika, Daniela, Sandrine, Dana, Jennifer, Tamsin, Cadence and Gilly all had memories that began with the Agency, no prior memories at all. "We all volunteered for this," Gilly insisted. "I saw video of myself from before the procedure. I agreed to do this. I was tearful at the thought of losing everything I had ever known, but it was for the greater good. It serves a higher purpose." She smiled encouragingly at James. "You don't have to test me, sir. I know my place, and I am committed to it. I know what I chose."

Only, she hadn't chosen. None of them had.

Gilly was tiny, shorter than Natasha. She had a thin, bony frame, paper pale skin that was nearly translucent. Her dirty blonde hair was short, cut to her ears and longer in front than in back. It gave her an almost boyish appearance, and that struck a deep nerve.

_You're taking all the stupid with you._

What was that about? What fragment of memory was that?

This was why they wiped him between missions. This was why he had to be cleared out before being put back on ice. His handlers didn't want to risk fragments shaking loose. They didn't want to have him remember, didn't want him to be human. For the longest time they hadn't known about Natasha, hadn't been able to shake her loose. But they would try if he had been foolish enough to let something slip, and all they had to remove was his past.

"Rebecca," he called out after one of the women. One of them had that name, so one of them should have turned around. But none turned, being too far ahead of him in the busy airport, and he stopped himself from yelling _Becky! You get back here! Ma left me in charge!_

Memory, not reality. A fragment coming to the surface, even though that Rebecca wasn't here, and none of these women looked like the girl he had been chasing in his memory. He'd had a sister once. At least one sister, though his gut told him there had been more than one.

James shook his head, as if he could shake the fragments of memory loose, and continued on his way. The women knew the rendezvous point. They weren't wiped so clean that they couldn't find their way without being tailed. Procedural memory was always kept, after all. It was only the autobiographical memory that was erased. That was the only memory that would pose a threat to the handlers, to the Agency. It really didn't matter _which_ Agency; none of them wanted active assets to develop personalities and motives of their own, especially if those motives didn't include the Agency's directives.

Moving through San Francisco was a blur. Bernal Heights was the location for the San Franciscan entry point into the Black Spectre base. It was a relatively laid back area within the city, perched on a hill with little mass transit access. She had said that Holly Park's renovations in 2004 had indeed cleaned up the drug culture reputation, it had also been a good cover for Black Spectre moving in. Bernal Hill was approximately forty acres, and a massive complex beneath it needed various access points. Daniela remembered that time period, though she doubted how accurate her memories were. "How else do you hide our agents, but by putting them in the neighborhood known for lesbians?" she had said before they left Texas. It made sense, so it was only a question of finding an appropriate access point.

He knew himself and his role in these missions well. The Winter Soldier could move silently in the shadows if need be, but often it wasn't necessary to do so. In a residential neighborhood, however, it was going to be necessary.

The city was gorgeous. Once this madness was through, when Natasha inevitably walked away from Yelena, James would bring her to visit. They could stroll through the tourist traps, laugh at the idiots that invariably insulted the locals, try to forget that they were deadly assassins with holes in their memories a mile wide. He could pretend he had something to offer her, that he could be a real person and wasn't merely a shell. With her, he could almost hope to be more than a ghost ready to fade away. With her, he wanted to be whole.

Though the twelve of them were scattered in different hotels, they did meet in Holly Park to get a better look at where an access point might be. Daniela looked around, unimpressed by the families and walkers. That was the surface world, after all. People like them had no business even wanting that kind of life. They simply weren't built for it.

Tamsin was the one that lit up as they sat in the park on blankets, pretending to be at a picnic of some kind. She was another pale, fragile looking woman, a splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose and tops of her cheeks. She had strawberry blonde hair and bright green eyes, looking every inch a stereotypical Irishwoman. She grinned, looking around the area, and her casual hipster clothing made her seem like a college freshman on summer break.

"I've been here before."

James' eyes sharpened, and a number of the girls perked up. "You have?"

"I remember being a transfer to the Austin base," Tamsin replied. "I hadn't been there long before it was compromised and we had to be moved again."

It was a plausible story, one Yelena had been absolutely tickled to tell. James merely nodded, pushing away any unease he might have had. "And?"

"The entry point is in a house not too far from here. The doors are carved into the basement, with entry codes that only the handlers use. But it's definitely an easier entry to compromise than some of the other ones."

"Then that's likely how they got in," James said, sticking to Yelena's story. They were reclaiming the other women, they were saving them from whatever horrors and experimentation that was going to happen. He wasn't sure if Yelena blamed Hydra or Beecham directly, and it really didn't matter. The women were on board to save their sisters, and that was all that mattered.

"So where's the house?" Daniela asked, frowning.

"Are we going to go in daytime, then?" Tamsin asked James.

It surprised him, until he remembered. Oh, that was right. _He_ was their handler for this job. _He_ was the one they would answer to.

"It'll be big and loud and flashy," he warned them as he nodded. "But this is San Francisco. They'll think it was an earthquake."

"We'll get our gear and get started," Sheila replied, dark eyes glittering with anticipation. Her hair was in cornrows, flat to her head. She patted it down, even though there was nothing to move, likely a nervous habit even though she didn't visibly appear nervous. "I'll take the lead once we get there." She had the darkest skin tones, and that would only give her an edge if the hallways were shadowed.

Still, initiative should be rewarded. James nodded and stood. "Let's get to work."

***

Exploring the Underground in Atlanta was actually kind of fun. Natasha hadn't had too many jobs like this for SHIELD in recent years. She could have worked it into some of her covers, but she usually had to find particular information, so the skills to blend in didn't always get used. It had been years since she had to visit Atlanta, and she certainly hadn't gone sight seeing during her last visit.

Nestled between the shops and eateries were the entry and exit points for the Atlanta base into Black Spectre. As with the Austin base, Black Spectre wanted to fly under the radar and not be noticed. Natasha went in first, waiting until the late afternoon at the handlers' shift change to slip into the complex. Yelena stayed above ground at first, garroting or stabbing the handlers as they tried to pass into the tourist crowds.

Natasha tapped into the security feeds first, shunting the live camera feed to a loop from the day before. It was easy to do even with the current security agent bleeding out on the floor, breath gurgling through blood and a hand at his throat as if it would keep him from dying. That never worked, but it never stopped the victims from trying it. She supposed she should feel something about this. It likely hadn't been necessary, perhaps only knocking him out and tying him up. But at the time, she hadn't even thought of that possibility.

She pushed aside the guilt. She couldn't deal with that now. There wasn't time for that, not while she was working, not while so much was riding on her success. Yelena knew she wanted to walk away after this, and she could try to repent then.

Assuming Yelena let her go.

It was like a sharp pain in her chest, and distantly she knew that Yelena wouldn't want her to leave. The quiet on her part was possibly just planning something, trying to come up with a way to keep her close. Natasha didn't want to think of the fallout if she did manage to walk away and return to the Avengers and SHIELD. If she had a place to return to, if they still wanted her.

There. Controls for the labs and the offices, the dormitories and the various amenities that the ladies needed to stay in shape and practice their skills.

Commandeering the security tech in the room, Natasha quickly determined which frequencies that the Black Spectre guards were using. No sign yet that she or Yelena were identified. This was good, and she quickly texted Yelena to have her meet in the command room.

In the meantime, Natasha dug into the mainframe and started weeding out the account names, passwords and prompts that the handlers used. Maybe she would wind up using it, maybe SHIELD would; she wasn't even sure why she was doing this, aside from maybe force of habit. She was a spy, after all, she couldn't help but collect secrets and lock them away to see if she could find an angle for its use later. It was an automatic reaction, more or less, something as natural to her as breathing. Steve had once asked if she ever stopped lying after their first undercover op for SHIELD together, and she had merely lofted an eyebrow at him and asked if he would even believe her answer.

It had hurt. It shouldn't have, but it had _hurt._

He trusted her, she knew that, and they had grown to be close friends. Clint was her best friend, her family, and Steve was a close second. The rest of the Avengers mattered to her, a handful of SHIELD agents she had the pleasure of knowing. Her heart constricted in her chest at the thought of them not trusting her, not believing that she cared about them or their interests, that they would see the surface and think that was all there was to her. She had hidden true herself so deeply, but they had seen enough glimpses of her true self to understand her, hadn't they? Clint and Steve couldn't be the only ones out of the Avengers, Melinda couldn't be the only SHIELD agent that trusted her.

Her musings were interrupted by Yelena strolling in through the door. There were splashes of blood on her clothes, a slick wet smudge against the black of her clothing. Her hair was pulled back, and only a few wisps of blonde had fallen out in her tussles so far.

"Ready?"

Natasha found a few jump drives and copied over the data she collected. In addition, she sent it all to upload to the secure server that she had sent messages to Clint with.

Backup. Redundancies. The information was the mission as much as the girls were. Women. As much as the women were.

Rising up in a pirouette like a ballerina, Natasha pocketed the jump drives and nodded briskly at the blonde. "Let's do it."

It was a dance that Natasha knew well, and it was easy to fall back into the steps she knew so well. She and Yelena had always been good, the best of the Red Room, the flawless practice team that others were measured against. They had been broken up several times for just that reason, to see how well they worked against each other and apart, to show them time and again that the Red Room was in control of their destinies.

Here was the mission, here were the Black Widows. It was like a ghost slithering beneath her skin, directing her where to go.

Handlers tumbled and died too easily, some of them not even trained how to combat an incoming threat. Had they relied on their deadly ladies for protection? Natasha didn't even bother to question it, because some of the handlers didn't even seem altogether present. That kind of glassy eyed stare was difficult to replicate; some of these handlers were wiped clean themselves. Who was at the top, then? Who was the one that pulled all these marionettes' strings?

The data would tell them who. The data was the important part of the mission. She could hunt them down later if it wasn't Beecham himself. If it was, then that would be easy; James would simply kill him and be done with it.

The thought really should have bothered her more than it did.

Natasha favored quiet, neat kills. She moved with ruthless efficiency through the offices in this part of the complex. Yelena laughed and taunted, tortured with words and gestures if she was allowed the time to. This was not one of those times, so that impulse was tamped down tight and she simply moved from one kill to the next. Her grin was playful and infectious, as if she was dancing at a party and not initiating the deadly dance of death.

Something in her eyes seemed to shift as she killed, however. The closer they came to the dorms, the closer Yelena seemed to be like the crazed woman injecting her with mage-derived serums in backwater motel rooms and fucking her into submission. Fear wound itself along her spine, clutching her heart in its icy claws. When the girls game, the ones whose minds were already broken and tampered with, trying to defend their handlers, Yelena cut them down as ruthlessly and as efficiently as she had the security staffers and handlers. "Submit to me to die," she snarled, and it didn't seem like the same girl Natasha had known.

Whoever she was, she was exceedingly dangerous. Natasha wasn't sure if she was exempt from that danger, either.

Yelena reached the dormitories first. These women weren't primed for attack, so Natasha didn't think of them as mindless girls or wind up dolls. They were training or lounging, waiting for their next target. Natasha had already found the evacuation code phrases, so as soon as Yelena barked for them to line up in formation, she was issuing the commands to evacuate for the abandoned house in Texas. That was their fallback for now, and they would have to find a longer term solution for their organization.

No, wait, _Yelena_ would have to find a long term solution. Natasha was calling it quits once Black Spectre was wiped off the map. She felt too fractured, too used, too worn thin. She was a frayed thread ready to snap.

None of the women questioned their authority. They were used to a rotating roster of handlers, depending on the mission at hand. Quickly and efficiently, she got their names, ages, rankings, fieldwork designations and access codes to the Spectre mainframe. Not one second guessed her taking this down on a cell phone; perhaps other handlers had done this before, or they were assuming this was the emergency protocol in emptying an entire base.

The women would be safe enough as they moved anonymously from Atlanta to Texas. Now it was time to exit the Underground and head back themselves.

Natasha tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut. She wasn't looking forward to it at all.

***

Tony's quinjet arrived in San Francisco with little fuss. While in transit, he had JARVIS use multiple concurrent scanning and facial recognition software programs to find the Winter Soldier. There was no point to do that for Atlanta, given how Natasha and Yelena had extensive training to mask their appearance; Loki would be able to track Natasha down using the new magical bond anyway. The Winter Soldier never bothered to mask his appearance, however, and they had a clear photo for reference.

Sif looked at Steve in concern as the plane touched down. "You remain tense."

"What if he doesn't recognize me?" Steve murmured, fiddling with the chin strap of his helmet.

"You fear having to harm him. Or kill him," Sif said, leaning into his arm a little.

Steve looked up at her and nodded, grateful for the support. "Yeah. I thought I lost him years ago. I didn't think he could have survived that kind of fall, and I feel like I should've. For him to still be alive after all this time, that I never knew... And what would it make me if I put him down like some rabid dog, not like the friend I'd lay my life down for?"

She rested a hand on his, stilling his frenetic movement. "Steve. You are a good man. You are a good soldier, a good friend. You don't do this to kill or destroy. You are here to save what you can, to protect who you can. Hold onto that."

He shot her a wry smile. "I knew a guy that said that. Forget being a good soldier, just remember how to be a good man."

"Too many lose sight of themselves when they see warfare," Sif reminded him gently. "I wouldn't want the same for you. If you lose yourself, there would be nothing left for your friend to come back to."

"Makes sense," he acknowledged.

Thor cleared his throat from his position seated across from them. "If he cannot be saved, and you cannot perform the final graces, I will for you." He seemed uncomfortable with the offer, but made it just the same. "I do hope it doesn't come to that."

"Let's not be a downer," Tony replied from his seat closer to the pilot. He was poring over two separate tablet screens, and didn't even look up. "Looks like we've got a hit at the airport, taxi services and baggage claim. Trying to access social media and local security feeds now. He doesn't look like some kind of crazed killer right now, just like he could use a good power nap and a shower."

Steve suppressed a sigh at that, wondering when was the last time Bucky would've gotten any sleep, when he would have eaten last. That was the kind of stuff that he used to worry about with Steve, back when he was a little guy. Odd how it was his turn to worry about that now, when Bucky was a lethal assassin and obviously able to survive no matter what the odds.

"Where is he now?" Steve asked, swallowing and looking up.

"Some residential neighborhood, it looks like. Can't scan for metal in all of that mess, but we're circling in. Looks like the last Instagram photo that has him in the background for sure was at a park." Tony looked up at Steve, no amusement or sarcastic glee in his eyes. "We'll find him, figure this all out. If he got mind wiped, we can probably flush that shit out."

"And if we can't?" Steve asked, almost dreading what he would hear.

"We figure out what to do when we get there." Tony's voice was firm, an edge of kindness in his tone. "No sense worrying about it until we see what kind of damage we're dealing with."

Nodding, Steve put on his helmet and squeezed Sif's hand. "I'm glad you're here," he murmured.

Her smile was gentle and understanding. "I am, too."

***

It was almost too easy to destroy the entrance to the San Francisco base. The only lives that had to be saved were the agents, so that made things that much easier. James and the eleven new Red Room recruits could filter down into the base and start hacking and slashing their way into the dormitories. They were all for saving their "sisters" from the menace taking over, and would send them to the abandoned house in Texas for now. Eventually, they would have to build a base of operations of their own. James didn't think that Yelena had thought that far ahead, and he didn't think Natasha would choose to stay. She might have balked when he had suggested the thought, but it seemed to be likely. She had changed, not unpleasantly so, but the indiscriminate killing bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

He liked moving forward and shooting, hitting and punching his way through when the bullets ran out. Then there were the knives, fluid elegance in meting out death to those that would take free will away. Oh, he enjoyed _those_ deaths, even if he couldn't eliminate Hydra the way he really wanted to.

Everything went the way it was supposed to, the walls rocking with the force of the blasts and getting splashed with blood or bullets. James could almost count this as a success.

Almost, because he saw a number of the Avengers in the park as he was trying to exit the base with the Red Room recruits.

"Get your sisters to Texas," he commanded Tamsin and Sheila, the closest of the recruits. "I'll take care of them to give you time to escape."

"You need our help," Daniela offered.

"Touching, but unnecessary. You are the priority. All agents are the priority. Escape and await orders when Yelena and Natasha return to Texas."

Clearly unhappy, they did as they were told. There were a number of routes they could take to the airport, or they could simply steal a number of vans and start driving out of the city before going on a plane with fake ID's. Either way, they would never fall into SHEILD hands.

James stalked forward, inwardly pleased by the double take a number of the Avengers. He could afford to be bold here, and it didn't matter what happened to him. It was upsetting that he would never see Natasha again, but he had the sinking sensation earlier that it might be the case. She was pulling away again, Yelena was going off the rails, his role would soon be superfluous. He wasn't going back to Hydra control, not after getting this taste of freedom, and there were likely other agencies in need of a good mercenary.

He went on the offensive, and wanted to laugh at how quickly they moved in response to his attacks. They clearly didn't want to harm him, while he had no such qualms.

"Bucky!" one of the masked men called out, anguish in his tone. A shapely armored brunette fought beside him, her small shield taking the brunt of the punches he delivered with his metal arm. She was good, countering with punches of her own. Apparently, she didn't mind throwing down or knocking him out.

"Who—the—hell—is—Bucky?" he said, aware that this was repeated from the time he last saw Natasha's friends. Oh. This had to be the blond one.

"Take off the mask," the brunette told him, giving a sweeping kick that nearly knocked James off of his feet. He staggered but righted himself, just in time to see the mask come off.

The tall blond man had blue eyes and a square jaw. This time, James felt a ping of recognition, something like pain in his chest, something like cold along his spine. "You..." he began, voice faltering slightly. He tightened his grip on his gun. "You used to be smaller."

"Yeah," he said, a relieved smile on his face. "Yeah, I did. Do you remember, Buck? You're my friend," he insisted, stepping closer.

Instinct kicked in, and James raised the gun despite his wavering intentions. _Danger._ "I have my mission," he snarled.

"Well, I have mine," the brunette said suddenly, swinging the shield at him. It connected with his jaw, and his head snapped back painfully. Memory shivered—Zola was standing there, clipboard in hand, eyes staring at him without mercy or pity, chemicals burning through his veins, cold so deep it seemed to get into his bones.

James staggered, unable to breathe. He started to murmur something almost by instinct, just outside of his conscious awareness, a name and title and identification number, the kind of thing that men recited when they were seized as prisoners of war. _Welcome back,_ Zola said, a satisfied grin on his face. _I was so eager to see how this worked..._

"Bucky," the blond man said. _Steve._

He took an unsteady step back, vision weaving in and out, but he couldn't give in to weakness, not now, not in front of the enemy. He raised his gun, not even sure how many bullets were left in it, how fast the Avengers were going to be.

But then the other blond threw his hammer, and it connected with his temple. James fell like a sack of bricks, consciousness gone.

***  
***


	6. Breakdown

Clint led the team in Atlanta. It almost didn't bother him that Loki was there, that the brooding asshole occasionally glared at everyone and everything, as if it was a personal affront that Natasha was with Yelena working to destroy a Black Spectre hideaway. What did it say about Clint that this seemed to be the new normal?

Though it was mostly Avengers in San Francisco, he knew he and Loki wouldn't be quite enough on their own to take out Natasha and Yelena. A few SHIELD agents accompanied them, level seven agents that needed some more field time. None of the four agents had any illusions that this would be easy, but Yelena was the target they had to focus on. Natasha was still a SHIELD agent, and these four were told she was on an undercover mission. They didn't need more details about it than that.

He tried texting the last number he had for Natasha, which was probably whatever she had been using back in Japan. At least, Loki had insisted that was the case. He was almost surprised when it didn't bounce back at him as undeliverable.

"What is it?" Loki asked, frowning slightly.

"I guess she's still using that phone?" he replied, unable to help making it a question at the end. It was unexpected, but at least it was a good sign. Maybe.

Even more surprising, he had a reply. Coordinates and _agents being extracted now. i have data for you/shield if possible to transfer._

Clint tossed Loki his phone and tapped on his earpiece, activating the comm link between him and the other agents. "Look alive, people. I have confirmation from Agent Romanoff that the Black Spectre agents are being extracted. This is a recon mission for you guys. Follow, but do not engage. Repeat, _do not engage."_

Loki looked at Clint with an eyebrow lofted. "Keeping the Black Widows all to ourselves?" he asked archly, returning Clint's phone. "You surprise me, Hawk."

"You think those other SHIELD agents would understand what's going on?"

Even Loki had to concede the point. So the other agents would follow the Black Spectre ladies, leaving Clint and Loki to track Natasha and Yelena. Probably a mistake, but that couldn't be helped. There were too many women here for him to keep track of, which was probably a sentiment that would make Tony Stark laugh out loud.

Clint and Loki separated as they scoured the Underground looking for Natasha and Yelena. To be perfectly honest, Loki was looking for Natasha and they both knew it. Loki had no interest in Yelena if he couldn't kill her or lock her up for taking Natasha away from him, but that was off the table. If he wasn't going to break directives, Clint didn't give a shit what Loki did to track them down. The link was back in place, so it was easiest for him to track Natasha anyway. That would leave Clint tracking Yelena the old fashioned way.

He caught a flash of blonde and somehow instantly knew that this had to be Yelena. It wasn't a different girl caught up with Black Spectre. There was no waiting to see what she was going to do next; they were going to kill people associated with Black Spectre and take in the mindwiped girls, but they also weren't going to care about the innocents caught in the crossfire. Clint had seen that happen in Japan, fires destroying more than The Hand.

How far down the rabbit hole had Natasha gone? She had left them messages about where she would be and what to expect, but there was no comment as to the original task of bringing in Yelena and the Winter Soldier. She had been so sure before, but what about now?

Clint quietly crept after the blonde, seeing her move through alleys with purpose, as if getting ready to meet someone. She had to be getting ready to meet Natasha, and they likely had a plan for hiding the girls that had been trapped by Black Spectre. Natasha was nothing if not prepared and overly detail oriented to a fault. She had to be, in order to juggle multiple cover identities and the goal at hand.

Yelena moved quickly and quietly, eyes darting everywhere. Clint had to hang back, and he really wished he could be on a perch somewhere up above to track her movements. He liked being up in the air, seeing from a distance. He liked taking in the bigger picture, figuring out what the next step would be. Following her meant that Yelena had the lead, that she was the one in control, and he could not affect anything. It was a horrible feeling, one that added to the uneasiness rolling down his spine.

She climbed up a fire escape toward a rooftop. Shit. She would definitely see him if he stayed at street level, and Clint wouldn't be able to see where she moved. This was bound to be a lose-lose situation; he didn't know what she would do once she realized she was being followed.

Clint went up a different building's rooftop, figuring he could keep track of her movements from a completely different building. He was Hawkeye, after all. His eyesight was sharp, so he could hang back in a safer spot.

He couldn't find her.

"Fuck," he muttered softly.

Fine, he could leap across the alley and look for clues that might pinpoint where she went. And where was Natasha anyway? He had definitely seen Yelena, but she was likely not too far away from her. They obviously worked together to take down the Black Spectre base in Atlanta, and Natasha would likely try to bring in Yelena soon. Clint hadn't told the others about the distress call hidden in the code Natasha had sent. She needed extraction, and Clint meant to provide it however he could. After all, it had to be bad if Natasha needed help getting out. The two of them were known for getting themselves out of all kinds of shit, but likely Yelena and the Winter Soldier was more than she could handle. She had been afraid of that, after all, and Clint only hoped that Natasha could recover after a mission like this. Hopefully SHIELD wouldn't send her right back out again, but he wouldn't hold his breath. Sometimes higher ups treated agents as if they were little more than machines.

Sooner or later, machines broke.

Clint backed up to get a running start and easily cleared the alley between the two buildings. It was still somewhat commercial here, with residential homes not too far away. Had they gotten an apartment to hide in? Or was the apartment for the women they were taking away from Black Spectre? Natasha hadn't gone into detail about what they were going to do with them.

He rolled across the rooftop, wincing as the gravel dug in through his jacket. Loki had to be close by, but Clint had no idea where he was. As he was about to tap his comm again, he saw Yelena step into the open just as Natasha cleared the fire escape on the other side of the building and swung onto the roof. Her eyes widened almost comically at the sight of him, even if Yelena looked murderously upset.

"Hey, Tash," he called out, brushing off his jacket. He flashed both ladies a shit eating grin, one of Natasha's favorites. "Long time no see," he added, stepping forward. Yelena swung up her gun hand immediately, and Clint stopped, raising his arms as if in surrender. "We were worried about you, came to see if you needed anything."

"Not from you," Yelena snarled before Natasha could respond. "Never from you. You'll never take me in, never get me alive. This I promise you."

And before Clint could even form a soothing reply, she opened fire.

***

Steve paced the hallway, wondering if he should say something to Tony. Maybe SHIELD should be involved with this; Bucky had retroactively been made a SHIELD agent when Peggy Carter restructured SSR into SHIELD. Why hadn't he argued about Bucky getting sent to Avengers Tower in New York?

The elevator dinged, and Steve looked up as Sif got off. This was a research floor, far away from the residential floors, and he didn't want Bucky to be traumatized all over again by Tony. Bruce would probably temper his enthusiasm, but the billionaire looked as though he was about to drool over the cybernetic arm. He wasn't Hydra, but Bucky wouldn't know that.

"Thor tells me that your friend Clint hasn't checked in."

He could feel himself grow pale, and he was torn. If Bucky woke up and was anything like his old self, Steve wanted to be there. But Clint was no less important, and if he was in trouble, Steve had to be there.

Sif closed the gap between them and grasped his arms. Her piercing look seemed to bore straight into his soul; she understood, of course she did, she'd lost comrades before. Instead of speaking right away, Sif drew him down for a kiss. This one wasn't like the tender, sweet ones they had exchanged so far. Instead, it was a filthy, toe-curling kiss that promised bone-searing passion and sex so good he wouldn't be able to walk straight for a week.

"Go. Find your friend. I'll stay here and watch over him. I'll keep him safe."

"He might not be Bucky when he wakes up," Steve warned her.

"I didn't know him," Sif reminded him gently. "I know what you've told me, but I have no comparison for how he should be."

Letting out a slow breath, Steve thought of his conversations with Sam. "Maybe that's a good thing," he murmured. "Less to compare to."

Her expression softened, and she held him tightly for a long moment. "We will weather this road together, Steve. I will aid you in this, and we will see him on the path to recovery."

"It's good that you're optimistic about this..."

"Anyone would be blessed by the gods indeed to have you as a friend. Or more." There was no artifice in her words, only an honesty that he appreciated. "I speak truth in this, because I am sure you were starting to reach him. His memories may have been altered, but I hope they were not destroyed by those villains that abused him."

Steve sighed. "Yeah. I hope so."

Sif pulled him in for a gentler kiss. "Find your friend, Steve. I will help protect him, even from himself if need be."

"I hope it doesn't come to that..."

"As do I," Sif murmured earnestly. "But if it comes to it, I will defend him from himself, will make sure he is safe until your return. So _you_ stay safe, Steve. Return to me. And to him, and the others in this tower. We all have need of you."

He cupped her cheek in his hand and traced the corner of her lip with his thumb. "I got a lot to come back for, you know."

She answered his smile with a wide one of her own. "Then we'll continue this upon your return."

Steve could finally bear to smile widely and then kiss her again. Sif was a very good reason to return in one piece, and she would definitely be able to handle Bucky if he went berserk and still remain in one piece.

"I'll return as soon as I can," he promised. Sif nodded, understanding, and his heart swelled at the sight of her. For someone that had felt so alone for so long, he was surrounded by friends that were like family and now a growing love that was more than a match for him. "You're perfect," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her before leaving.

Time to catch up with Clint and Loki.

***

Yelena couldn't stop herself from firing even if she wanted to. There was soft, surprised moan of pain when the first bullet hit, and something inside of her sang out in glory when the screaming began. Yes, this was her power, this was what she was meant to do. No one would have Natalia, no one else would ever take her away again. The twisted, confused thoughts in her mind would settle, and everything would make sense again. It would all be over, she could finally feel something like peace again.

Only, Natalia was screaming in agony, too. She was behind Yelena, not hurt, but wrenching at her arm and telling her to stop, goddammit, stop it, stop it, no, never, _what have you done?_ Natalia was screaming, as if her body was the one shredded by bullets, and Yelena finally dropped the automatic.

She was crying. Natalia was crying, and Yelena couldn't understand it. "But we'll be together. He'll never take you away from me again. I'll deal with Winter, I have to deal with Winter, he was already there and always there and watching over us. But you have to stay—"

Natalia wrenched herself from Yelena's grasp. "I can't forgive you for this. _Never."_

And belatedly, Yelena remembered her promise, that she would protect Hawkeye, that she would never cause him harm. Because he was precious to Natalia, he had protected her and shielded her and had been her companion when no one else would have, because he was her _friend,_ had never shared her bed, had no hold over her that way. Yelena had broken her promise cruelly, breaking a piece of Natalia's soul.

She sank to her knees and looked up at Natalia with mirrored pain. "I didn't remember. I couldn't remember." Looking up at Natalia, she couldn't tell if she believed her. "Please, Natalia, I wouldn't hurt you. I could never. I couldn't... My..." She dug her hands into her pale hair and pulled in desperation. "I don't know, I don't know, I didn't— What's happening? Natalia, please, I would not _ever_ hurt you..."

"The conditioning," Natalia whispered, her voice breaking. She was gorgeous even with tears in her eyes, and Yelena wanted to kiss them away even as Starkovsky wanted to pick up the fallen automatic between them and pull the trigger, filling Natalia's chest with bullets for being so weak, such a failure to the Red Room.

"You have to stop me," Yelena whispered. Starkovsky was pushing at her, and he was strong, so strong. "I can't... You're weak, Natalia. You know what they do with the ones that fail." Her voice broke as well, and her eyes filled with tears. _"I'm_ weak. You have to stop me. Stop me, or I'll do it again. I won't stop, Natalia. I _can't._ I'm what they made me, I can't stop. I tried, I really did. I was someone else for a while, and it helped, and the Other tried, but I can't stop, not when I'm me."

"I know," Natalia said, nodding as she fell to her knees as well. Something was twisting in her face, grotesque pain that Yelena had put there. It knifed through her, and the warring instincts battled for control. "Yelena..."

"I love you," she said, pushing the words from her lips before the conditioning could stop her from saying them. Starkovsky howled his filthy words, and she tried her best to ignore it. "I know you can't love me the same way, you were the perfect Black Widow, and you couldn't. I'm the failure. I'm not as good as you. I can't fight it." Tears tracked down her cheeks. "I can't stop. You have to stop me."

"Yelena..." She stopped when Yelena pressed her knife into Natalia's hands. "I'll get you help."

"I'm beyond help. Death is all I know, Natalia. Unless I'm with you, and even then sometimes I want to hurt you so badly." She closed her eyes and tilted her chin up. "Stop me, Natalia. Please, I beg you. If you ever loved me, even a little... Please stop me."

The knife was sharp, and it was only a whisper against her throat. Yelena barely felt it, and opened her eyes to the warm gush of blood pouring from her throat.

Natalia pulled her into her arms, and she managed to smile. The world around her narrowed, and she could only focus on the vivid red hair as her limbs went numb. "I wish I was enough," Natalia whispered against her hair. "I wish I was better, faster..."

 _You are enough,_ Yelena wanted to say. But words slipped unspoken past her lips, and her eyes fell closed. Nothing hurt anymore. _I love you, I love you, I love..._

And then there was nothing.

***

Loki looked up at the rooftop above him when he heard Natasha screaming. Before he could even try to head toward her— dammit, why couldn't he fly???— a body fell to the ground with a bloody spatter. He approached it with dread, then froze at the sight of Clint's bullet-riddled torso and the mess he had made when hitting the ground.

_Natasha._

He tried to move to Clint's side, to stupidly feel for a pulse. If there was one, however faint, perhaps he could try his hand at the _spá,_ weave a new fate for him, wrap the _seidr_ around him, make him get up for her sake...

The threads for his life were severed.

Feeling a presence beside him, Loki looked up and saw Hel. She was dressed in black spider's silk, runes woven into the fabric in blood red threads. She held gleaming silver strands in her hands, and he instantly knew that she was holding Clint's lifeline. Behind her lay an open portal into her realm, and the ghostly shape of Clint's soul stood behind her in confusion. He looked from Loki kneeling beside his corpse to Hel, not knowing what was happening or why, and finally stared at Loki as if he could explain everything.

If only.

"He cannot die, Hel," Loki said, voice stronger than he thought it would be.

"The Norns foresaw this," Hel told him, her voice like the whisper of dead leaves brushing across gravestones. "Skuld told me herself."

 _"No._ There must be some bargain I can make, some way to reattach the thread before you close your realm." He could hear the desperation in his voice. It wasn't even Clint, really; Loki still didn't care for the man on a personal level, but he heard Natasha's pain and knew she would be devastated. Clint was her family, one of the few lives on this entire realm that she cherished, and if he could do anything for her...

"His soul belongs to me, Loki," Hel said, her head tilting slightly to the side. "What do you have that I want?"

And that was the problem. He had _nothing._ For all his magic, all his knowledge, all his scheming for power, he had _nothing_ she wanted, save for one thing.

"I give you myself," Loki whispered, looking up at her from his kneeling position. He saw Clint's ghost startle, eyes widening in shock. "My soul is at least equal to his, is it not?"

Hel nodded, holding up Clint's silver lifeline. She reached out in front of her, and Loki felt a sharp _tug_ in the center of his chest. Gasping, he could see his life suspended between her fingers, the pulse of his magic all along its length. Loki could see for himself that the two threads were of similar consistency.

"Then take it," he whispered, hands curling into fists at his sides. "Natasha needs him. She deserves that much after what she's been through because of me. I'll go willingly with you, and I won't fight you when we get to Helheim."

But Hel let go of Loki's thread. "I will not take your life, Loki," she murmured.

Loki could only gasp in shock as his lifeline snapped back into his body, and he stared up at her, nonplused. "But—"

"I will take a favor from you, equal in magnitude, to be repaid in kind when I ask for it." She knelt beside Clint's broken body and started pulling at the shattered threads of his lifeline. Her hands moved impossibly quickly, faster than Loki could track, weaving the broken ends of the silver strands together. She beckoned toward Clint's ghost, gesturing that he should reenter his body. "I give you this gift, Clint Barton. Use it wisely."

As his body suddenly gasped for breath, his wounds healed, expelling the bullets. Shattered bone sealed, and blood flowed backward into his body.

Natasha jumped from the fire escape to land beside them, a bloody knife curled in her fist. She was covered in blood and tears, her face a mask of pain and misery. Taking in the tableau, she unsteadily rose to her feet. "What happened?" she rasped, sounding as if she had been screaming for hours on end.

Hel straightened and smiled at her. "Something I never thought I would see. Take them and go, Natasha. My business is finished here."

Loki caught sight of a different silver thread in her hands as her portal closed behind her, but didn't remark upon it. He simply helped Clint to his feet and turned to Natasha. With only the briefest of hesitations, he held out his arms. She tumbled into them, pulling Clint along with her, and sobbed as if her world had shattered.

And it had, hadn't it? For once he wasn't the root cause of it, but Loki hadn't been able to save it for her, either.

Swallowing his pain and rage, he simply held both of them close, waiting for the storm of emotions to pass.

***

Clutching Clint tight, Natasha sobbed openly, leaning into him as he held her tight. "I lost you," she sobbed. "She killed you and I _lost you."_

"Hey," he murmured softly, stroking her head gently. "It's okay now. I'm here. I'm not dead, I'm still here."

"It's my fault," Natasha sobbed. "I couldn't control her. I thought I could, I thought I had the triggers in check, I thought I could do it..."

"Tasha..."

"I should've known," she said, pulling back to look at him, utter devastation in her expression. "I didn't have a bead on Loki in the beginning, not like I thought I did, and he tried to ruin me. He tried to destroy everything I worked so hard to build. And now again, everything I tried to build, the ledger I tried to balance... It's all red again. It's nothing but dripping red, just like Loki said on the helicarrier. I _can't_ do this. I can't. I can't live this way, I can't be alone, I can't lose anyone else. _I can't do this."_

"Then we'll quit SHIELD," Clint said evenly, startling Natasha. "Together, we'll quit. Fury can't send you on half assed missions. You'd still be an Avenger and Ambassador to Asgard. Those are plenty for you to take on, Tash."

Her lips trembled and tears still shone in her eyes. She felt broken to pieces, edges grating against each other. Her body was sore, as if she had taken a beating from a super soldier or Chitauri warrior and then tossed around the room for an extra few rounds. Her lips opened, but no sound came out.

"Tash," Clint murmured, letting his hands rest on her shoulders. "You're my best friend. You know that, right? I will be here, and I understand what you're going through."

"I loved her, Clint," Natasha said miserably. "I wasn't supposed to, but I loved her. And then James... I loved him more, and she knew that. If I could make myself love her more..."

"Then it wouldn't be real," Clint told her gently. "And I'm sure she wouldn't have wanted that."

"I could've saved her, then."

"Or she could've killed you, too."

Natasha swallowed painfully, and Clint wrapped her in his arms. "Hey. We'll figure it out, you know we will. You and me, Natasha. Some things only we know, and it's okay. It works that way, we'll make it work."

She wasn't even sure if he was making any sense, but she understood the sentiment behind his words. Clinging to him, she let her eyes fall shut and simply absorbed his warmth. He was alive, alive, alive. She was alive.

Poor Yelena, too broken from the start, burning out before the end.

***

"We have a deal, Natasha," Loki said in quiet tones.

Natasha was lying on her bed in Avengers Tower, wearing a plain white T shirt and loose yoga pants as she faced the window. Her back was to the door, which was troubling, even if she trusted the Avengers. Usually she was more aware of her surroundings.

But she was broken now. All his effort at trying to destroy her, and Yelena had done it. She took Natasha's heart and shredded it, and killing her had ruined the rest.

Loki took no joy in seeing her this way at all.

"Deal?" Natasha echoed, rolling over to face him. Her expression was empty, devoid of emotion, as if she had been wrung out entirely.

How she suffered, and how it tortured him now to see it.

"It's my turn," Loki lied. Natasha didn't catch the lie at all. She looked at him blankly, as if she had no idea what he was talking about, as if her mind had been wiped clean. He could tell her anything, do anything, reshape her into whatever he wanted.

Extending his hand to her, Loki waited patiently for her to take it. When she did, her touch was light, almost hesitant. She wasn't sure of herself at all, and he knew this feeling well. What was she if she wasn't the Widow? Who would she be now?

Loki brought Natasha to the apartment in Astoria. Though she hadn't been able to renew the lease, Loki had done it with glamours and suggestion. He was thinking of buying the building and keeping it for himself, as ramshackle as the neighborhood was. Then he wouldn't have to think of leases and ledgers and rents.

She sat on the couch and looked at him blankly. As much as he ached to sink inside of her, taste her, feel her mouth on him, it wasn't right. He understood that now. She was hurt, devastated, and anything like that now would be tantamount to forcing her. He recoiled even from the thought of that, and remembered how gentle she had been when he had used his safe word on Asgard, never once belittling his fears.

Kneeling in front of her, Loki nearly despaired at her empty gaze. Everything she had ever known or thought was upended, was it not? Her own personal Ragnarok. When his world had collapsed the first time, he sought to assuage his rage in conquest. Then he had sought to destroy her, then himself, then whoever he named enemy. She had been so steadfast through it all. But what if she had not? What if she had been whittled away, bit by bit, putting herself into harm's way repeatedly, and now had nothing left? She was that kind of woman, her kindness masked by cruelty and lies, a product of who she had been shaped to be.

"What do you want?" she asked in a voice devoid of emotion as he took her hands.

It wasn't the way to open a scene. Had she forgotten? Was she that lost?

He could not care for an entire realm, but he could care for one woman.

"Tell me about her," Loki said gently. Natasha likely never grieved, never allowed herself to. She could grieve over Clint, over her bloody past. But she likely would never allow herself to grieve over a lost, crazed love that she couldn't save.

_I love you. Even if you never love me back, even if I am never worthy of it, I love you._

"What do you want to know?" she asked, her voice raspy and hoarse.

"Tell me everything," Loki said softly, still kneeling in front of her. He tightened his grip in her hands. "Tell me what you can't speak of to anyone else. Tell me why you loved her, why you tried to save her. Tell me about the girl she was before they made her a monster."

She looked into his eyes, and must have seen the sincerity there. She started to cry, great, ugly sobs that wracked her entire body. But she started to speak, haltingly at first, then with words tripping over each other as she forced them past her lips. All the while, Loki held her hands, then gathered her up into his arms and rocked her like a child as she continued to speak.

Finally, finally, Natasha allowed herself to grieve.

***

Natasha walked into Fury's office and sat down without an invitation. She put her encrypted tablet, access cards and keys on the table. "I can bring the weapons and cat suit back to the armory," she told him without preamble.

"So you're that determined to leave?" Fury asked, leaning back in his seat.

"I can't do this anymore."

He nodded, not surprised by her reply. "We've asked too much of you." He leaned forward and folded his hands on his desk. "Are you all right, Natasha?"

She looked him in the eye and decided to be honest. "No, I'm not. But I will be."

"I can change your status to that of a consultant," Fury began slowly. "That way the ties aren't completely cut. I have it set that this whole business with the Winter Soldier was a deep cover mission at my request." She blinked in surprise, but otherwise was very still with this admission. She hadn't expected that he would back her up this way. "You wouldn't have to take on those kinds of things as a consultant."

"Director..."

"There are many things you were asked to do, which you did without complaint. You made the sacrifice play many times, even when not asked to." Fury gave her a pointed stare. "You are an asset, Agent Romanoff, and you are not one I want to let go of anytime soon. Take as much time as you need, whatever distance you need." He leaned back in his chair and flashed her a smile. "Besides, who else could fit into that suit of yours?"

She laughed a little, tension she didn't realize she was carrying bleeding away. "I won't be alone, exactly. I'll be with the Avengers."

"Then you _definitely_ need the armor. Keep it."

"I'll hand over the weapons—"

"Don't bother. I know that Stark probably modified everything anyway. This way, if you ever agree on a joint venture, you don't have to stop by the armory. You can just pick up and go."

Natasha nodded slowly. "I didn't expect this."

"I know. But we owe you _something_ for the work you've done for us. You've gone above and beyond what we've asked you to do in every mission we've asked you to take."

"It could be gratitude. For not killing me."

Fury shook his head. "Then you would have fulfilled your duty to the letter and nothing more. I have enough agents like that in my command. The ones that _do_ make the effort, the ones that matter... You deserve just as much back as you give us."

Leaning back and sinking into the chair a little, Natasha allowed a sigh to escape her lips and her carefully constructed mask to fall. "I'm tired." She looked at Fury, a man she respected wholly and unreservedly, who had over time truly earned that respect and loyalty. "I can't be a SHIELD agent anymore, Director. I can't lose anything else and still be useful." She couldn't lose _anyone_ else, she meant, and it had been _too close._

He nodded somberly. "I'm aware. Barton nearly resigned, too. When Sitwell didn't accept it, he barged in here and shouted at me hoping I'd strip his access." Natasha smiled faintly, imaging that. After a moment, Fury had a ghost of a smile on his lips as well. "Needless to say, I told him to stop being a fucking idiot and sit his ass down."

"That probably got through to him."

"Only just. He's on loan to the Avengers indefinitely, by the way. It probably won't keep him too safe, but it's the best that I could do."

She smiled warmly at him, absurdly grateful. "Thank you."

"I'll let the lot of you handle it. Sitwell didn't appreciate his behavior."

"He wouldn't," Natasha replied, almost surprised to find a grin on her face.

"He's a good agent," Fury said, folding his hands on his desk again. "Just not ready to handle you two very well. So if anything happens, contact Assistant Director Hill or myself directly. We'll see what we can do."

"Thank you, sir."

He stood, and Natasha rolled to her feet as well. Fury clasped his hands over hers and gave her an intense look. "Go home and rest, Natasha. Don't forget why we do the things we do. Once you lose that, you lose everything."

"I'll remember that," she murmured. She flashed him a genuine smile and scooped up the items from his desk. "Thank you. For everything."

Fury returned the smile with one of his own. "You're very welcome. You've come a long way, Natasha. Take care of yourself."

She nodded and made her way out of the office. This time, she might even do that.

The End


End file.
